[ebooktalk] Pat Barker

• From: "David Russelll" <david.russell8@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: <ebooktalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:51:35 -0000

Hi all,

For Elaine and anyone else interested, I am attaching the three books in her
Regeeneration trilogy.

I believe the first one is "regeneration" the second one is "The eye in the
door" and the final book is "The Ghost Road".  Not sure how good these scans
are as they are a few years old.


David

THE GHOST ROAD
Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance


'Roads', Edward Thomas
Part One





ONE


In deck-chairs all along the front the bald pink knees of Bradford
businessmen nuzzled the sun.

Billy Prior leant on the sea-wall. Ten or twelve feet below him a
family was gathering its things together for the trek back to boardinghouse
or railway station. A fat, middle-aged woman, swollen feet
^       bulging over lace-up shoes, a man with a lobster-coloured tonsure --

I       my God, he'd be regretting it tomorrow -- and a small child, a boy,

being towelled dry by a young woman. His little tassel wobbled as he
stood, square-mouthed with pain, howling, 'Ma-a-am.' Wet sand was
the problem. It always was, Prior remembered. However carefully
you tiptoed back from that final paddle, your legs got coated all over
again, and the towel always hurt.

The child wriggled and his mother slapped him hard, leaving red
prints on his chubby buttocks. He stopped screaming, gulped with
shock, then settled down to a persistent grizzle. The older woman
protested, 'Hey, our Louie, there's no need for that.' She grabbed the
towel. 'C'mon, give it here, you've no bloody patience, you.'

The girl - but she was not a girl, she was a woman of twenty-five or
twenty-six, perhaps -- retreated, resentful but also relieved. You could
see her problem. Married, but the war, whether by widowing her or
simply by taking her husband away, had reduced her to a position of
tutelage in her mother's house, and then what was the point? Hot
spunk trickling down the thigh, the months of heaviness, the child
born on a gush of blood -- if all that didn't entitle you to the status and
independence of a woman, what did? Oh, and she'd be frustrated too.
Her old single bed back, or perhaps a double bed with the child,
listening to snores and creaks and farts from her parents' bed on the
other side of the wall.

She was scrabbling in her handbag, dislodging bus tickets, comb,
purse, producing, finally, a packet of Woodbines. She let the cigarette
dangle wetly from her lower lip while she groped for the matches. Her
lips were plump, a pale salmon pink at the centre, darkening to brownish
red at the edges. She glanced up, caught him looking at her, and


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flushed, not with pleasure -- his lust was too blatant to be flattering but
drawn by it, nevertheless, into the memory of her unencumbered
girlhood.

Her mother was helping the little boy step into his drawers, his hand
a dimpled starfish on her broad shoulder. The flare of the match
caught her attention. 'For God's sake, Louie,' she snapped. 'If you
could only see how common you look ..."

Louie's gaze hadn't moved. Her mother turned and squinted up into
the sun, seeing the characteristic silhouette that said 'officer'. 'Look for
the thin knees,' German snipers were told, but where they saw prey
this woman saw a predator. If he'd been a private she'd have asked him
what the bloody hell he thought he was gawping at. As it was, she
said, 'Nice weather we're having, sir.'

Prior smiled, amused, recognizing his mother's speech, the accent of
working-class gentility. 'Let's hope it lasts.'

He touched his cap and withdrew, thinking, as he strolled off, that
the girl was neither a widow nor married. The way the mother's voice
had cracked with panic over that word 'common' said it all. Louie's
knees were by no means glued together, even after the child. And her
mother was absolutely right, with that fag stuck in her mouth she did
look common. Gloriously, devastatingly,/wckd6/y common.

He ought to be getting back to barracks. He had his medical in less
than an hour, and it certainly wouldn't do to arrive gasping. He had no
business to be drifting along the front looking at girls. But he looked
anyway, hoarding golden fuzz on a bare arm, the bluish shadow between
breasts thrust together by stays, breathing in lavender sharpened
by sweat.

The blare of music inside the fairground drew him to stand in the
entrance. So far today the only young men he'd seen had been in
uniform, but here were men as young as himself in civilian dress.
Munitions workers. One of them was chatting to a young girl with
bright yellow skin. He felt the automatic flow of bile begin and turned
away, forcing himself to contemplate the bald grass. A child, holding a
stick of candy-floss, turned to watch him, attracted to the man who
stood so still among all the swirl and dazzle. He caught her looking at
him and smiled, remembering the soft cotton-wool sweetness of
candy-floss that turned to clag on the roof of your mouth. She bridled
and turned away, clutching her mother's skirt. Very wise/

As he walked on, his smile faded. He could have been a munitions
worker, he thought. Kept out of danger. Lined his pockets. His father


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would have wangled him a place in a nice safe reserved occupation,
and would not have despised him for it either, unlike many fathers.
The weedy little runt would at least have been behaving like a sensible weedy 
little runt, refusing to fight in 'the bosses' war'. But he'd never
seriously considered doing that.

Why not? he wondered now. Because I don't want to be one of them, he thought, 
remembering a munitions worker's hand patting a
girl's bottom as he helped her into the swing-boat. Not duty, not
patriotism, not fear of what other people would think, certainly not
that. No, a kind of ... fastidiousness. Once, as a small boy, he'd
slipped chewed-up pieces of fatty mutton into the pocket of his trousers,
because he couldn't bring himself to swallow them, and his father,
when the crime came to light, had said, in tones of ringing disgust,
'That bairn's too fussy to live.' Too fussy to live, Prior thought. There
you are, nowhere near France and an epitaph already. The thought
cheered him up enormously.

By now he was walking up the hill towards the barracks, a chest
tightening climb, but he was managing it well. His asthma was good at
the moment, better than it had been for months. All the same it might
be as well to sit quietly somewhere for a few minutes before he went
into the examination room. In the end all he could do was to turn up
in a reasonable state, and answer the questions honestly (or at least tell
no lies that were likely to be found out). The decision would be taken
by other people. It always was.

Though he had managed to take one decision himself.

His thoughts shifted to Charles Manning and the last evening they'd
spent together in London.
--      Have you stopped to think what's going to happen if you're not sent
back? Manning had asked. Six months, at least six months, probably to the
end of the war, making sure new recruits wash between their toes.

-       Might have its moments.

--      Doing a hundred and one completely routine jobs, each of which could be
done equally well by somebody else. You'd be much better working at the
Ministry. I can't promise to keep the job open.

-       No, thank you, Charles.

No, thank you. He was passing the Clarence Gardens Hotel where
he'd been stationed briefly last winter before the summons to London
came. Plenty of routine jobs there. He and Owen, his fellow nut-case,
had arrived on the same day, neither of them welcomed by the CO.
They'd been assigned to 'light duties'. Prior became an administrative


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THE GHOST ROAD


dogsbody, sorting out the battalion's chaotic tiling system. Owen fared
yet worse, chivvying the charladies, ordering vegetables, peering into
lavatory bowls in search of unmilitary stains. Mitchell had given them
hell. Prior got him in the mornings when he was totally vile, Owen in
the evenings when brandy had mellowed him slightly.

- What do you expect? Prior said, when Owen complained. He's lost
two sons. And who shows up instead of them? Couple of twitching Nancy
boys from a loony-bin in Scotland.

Silence from Owen.

-- That's what he thinks, you know.

As he reached the entrance to the barracks, a squad of men in singlets
and shorts, returning from a cross-country run, overtook him and he
stood back to let them pass. Bare thighs streaked with mud, steam
rising from sweaty chests, glazed eyes, slack mouths, and as they
pounded and panted past, he recognized Owen at the head of the
column, turning to wave.


'Good heavens,' Mather said, as Prior pulled off his shirt. 'You haven't
been getting much outdoor exercise, have you?'

'I've been working at the Ministry of Munitions.'

Mather was middle aged, furrow-cheeked, sandy-haired, shrewd.

'All right, drop your drawers. Bend over.'

They always went for the arse, Prior thought, doing as he was told.
An army marches on its stomach, and hobbles on its haemorrhoids. He
felt gloved fingers on his buttocks, separating them, and thought,
Better men than you have paid for this.

'I see you've got asthma.'

There? 'Yes, sir.'

'Turn round.'

Another unduly intimate gesture.

'Cough'

Prior cleared his throat.

'I said, cough.' The fingers jabbed. 'And again.' The hand changed
sides. 'Again.'

Prior was aware of wheezing as he caught his breath.

'How long?'

Prior looked blank, then stammered. 'S-six months, sir.'

'Six months? But it says --'

'I mean, the doctor told my mother I had it when I was six months
old, sir.'

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'Ah.' Mather turned over a page of the file. 'That makes more sense.'

'Apparently I couldn't tolerate milk.'

Mather looked up. 'Awkward little bugger, weren't you? Well, we'd
better have a listen.' He reached for his stethoscope and came towards
Prior. 'What were you doing at the Ministry of Munitions?'

'Intelligence, sir.'

'Oooh, very impressive. Catch anybody?'

Prior looked bleakly ahead of him. 'Yes.'

'Patrol here caught a German spy on the cliffs.' Mather snorted,
fitting the stethoscope. 'Tickled a local yokel with their bayonets more
like.'

Prior started to say something, but Mather was listening to his chest.
After a few minutes, he straightened up. 'Yes, you have got a bit of a
wheeze.' His attention was caught by the scar on Prior's elbow. He
turned the arm towards him.

'The Somme,' Prior said.

'Must've hurt.'

'The expression "funny bone" didn't seem appropriate at the time.'

Mather went back to the desk, sat down. 'Now let's see if I've got
this straight. You were invalided home with shell-shock. That right?
April last year?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you were sent first to Netley and then to Craiglockhart War
Hospital, where you remained till . . . November.' He looked up. 'I
suppose you get a lot of dipsomania, in places like that? Alcohol, man,'
he explained, as Prior continued to look blank.

'Didn't see any, sir. If I had I'd certainly have drunk it.'

'So what were your symptoms?'

'I was mute, sir. Some people found it an improvement on the basic
model.'

But Mather was reading, not listening. 'W. H. R. Rivers,' he said. 'I
knew him. He was two years ahead of me at Bart's. Paralytic
stammer.'

Prior looked puzzled. 'No.'

'Ah? Got his own voice back too. He must be good.' He tapped a
sheet of paper. 'The discharge report says asthma.'

'I had two attacks while I was there.'

'Hm.' Mather smiled. 'Any problems with the nerves now?'

'No.'

'Appetite?'


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THE GHOST ROAD


'I could cat more than I
get.'

'So could we all, laddie. Sleeping all right?'

'Not last night. Bloody tent leaks.'

'Generally?'

'I sleep all right.'

Mather sat back in his chair. 'How did you get in?'

'Through the flap.'

Mather's forefinger shot up. 'Watch it, laddie. How did you get into
the army?'

A brief struggle with temptation, ending as Prior's struggles with
temptation usually did. 'I lied to the doctor, Doctor.'

Surprisingly, Mather laughed, a short bark.

'Everybody lied,' Prior said.

'So they did, I remember it well. I saw men who'd climbed out of
the window of the workhouse infirmary to come and enlist. Syphilis,
epilepsy, tuberculosis, rickets. One lad - little squeaky voice, not a hair
on his chin, fourteen, if that -- looked me straight in the eye and swore
on his mother's life he was nineteen.' Mather smiled, revealing brown
teeth. 'Not one of them got past me.'

Oh fuck.

'Gas training,' Mather said.

Silence.

'Well?'

' Terribly good idea,' Prior said earnestly.

'Did you go through the huts?'

'No.'

'You must be affected at very low concentrations?'

'I was known as the battalion canary, sir. Partly that. Partly my
pleasant, cheerful personality.'

Mather looked at him. 'Get dressed.'

'The point is I managed perfectly well for three years. I didn't once report 
sick with asthma or the effects of gas.'

'Yes, laddie.' Mather looked unexpectedly compassionate. 'And it
might be said you've done your bit.'

A twitch of the pale, proud face. 'Not by me.'

'And the asthma never played you up in France?'

'Never.'

'Two attacks in Craiglockhart. None in France. I wonder why?'

'Open-air life suited my chest, sir.'

'We're not running a sanatorium, laddie. Go on, get dressed. Then


436

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THE GHOST ROAD


you go left along the corridor, turn left at the end, and you'll see a row
of chairs. Wait there.'

Mather went into the adjoining room and started on his next victim.
Prior dressed, pausing to wipe the sweat off his upper lip. Like going
over the top, he thought. No, it wasn't. Nothing was like that. Civilians
seemed to use that expression all the time now. I went a bit over the
top last night, they said, meaning they'd had a second glass of port.
Prior peered into the small looking-glass behind the wash-basin, checking
the knot in his tie. If they didn't send him back he was going to be
awfully lonely, marooned among civilians with their glib talk. His
reflection jeered, Lonely? You? Oh, c'mon, duckie. You can always split in
two. At least the Board didn't know about that. Or rather they didn't,
provided Rivers hadn't written to them. A. paralytic stammer. Not just
any old stammer. Paralytic. Interesting, Prior thought, letting himself
out of the room.

The place smelled like a barracks. Well, it was a barracks, but the
Clarence Gardens Hotel, after months of army use, had not smelled
anything like this. His nose twitched, identifying armpits, feet, socks,
oil, boot-polish, carbolic soap, the last blown in bubbles between the
raw fingers of a boy scrubbing the floor. Rear-end like a truck and a
face to match, but Prior produced a charming smile, nevertheless,
because he owed it to himself, and strode on, leaving a trail of muddy
footprints across the wet floor.

One man waiting. Owen.

'The O's and the P's again,' Owen said, picking up a pile of John
Bulls from the vacant chair and dumping them on the floor. They'd
last waited together like this at Craiglockhart, at their final board.

Prior jerked his head at the door. 'Who's in?'

'Nesbit. He's been in thirty minutes.'

'What's taking so long?'

Owen hesitated, then mouthed, 'Clap.'

Well, Prior thought, that was one way of getting out of it. And then
he thought, You uncharitable bastard, how do you know he got it
deliberately? And then he thought, Well, I am an uncharitable bastard.

'I won't take long,' Owen said. 'I'm GS already.'

'Then why are you here?'

'Irregular heartbeat. I added my name to the draft, but when I had
the final medical they promptly took it off again.'

'You added your name to the draft? Sure it's your heart that's
wrong?'


437
THEGHOSTROAD   *


f |

Owen laughed, and looked away. 'I'd just heard Sassoon was

wounded. It seemed the only thing to do.'       §

Yes, Prior thought, it would. He remembered them at Craiglock-  § j

hart: the incongruous pair, Sassoon so tall, Owen so short, the love    Jf i

S& I

Owen hadn't been able, or hadn't bothered, to disguise. f

'Also,' Owen said, 'I was getting pretty tired of being regarded as "a
twitching Nancy boy from a loony-bin in Scotland".'

Prior smiled. 'I applied it to myself as well.'

Owen had cut himself shaving, he noticed. Blood in shiny brown
flakes filled the crease between cheek and earlobe.

'Do you think you'll be all right this time?'

Owen said cheerfully, 'Oh, yes, I should think so. I've been doing a
lot of running.'

'I saw.'

The door opened. Nesbit came out, looking distinctly pale.

Owen stood up. 'Do they want me in?'

'I don't know.'

Owen sat down again. 'Worse than the dentist, isn't it?' he said,
forcing a laugh.

A few minutes later he was called in. Prior sat listening to the
murmur of voices, thinking what bloody awful luck it was to have
got Mather. Some MOs would send a corpse back if you propped one
up in front of them, particularly now when every man was needed for
the latest in a long line of 'one last pushes'. Abruptly, before he was
ready, the door opened and Owen came out. Owen started to speak
and then, realizing the Board's secretary had followed him, raised a
thumb instead. From which Prior concluded that Owen's chances of
ending the year deaf, blind, dumb, paralysed, doubly incontinent,
insane, brain damaged or -- if he were lucky -- just plain dead had
enormously increased. We're all mad here, he thought, following the
secretary into the room, saluting, sitting down in the solitary chair
facing the long table, meeting every eye confidently but not too confidently.
And really, amidst the general insanity, was it fair to penalize a
man merely because in conditions of extreme stress he tended to develop
two separate personalities? You could argue the army was getting
a bargain.

After the first few questions he began to relax. They were
concentrating on his asthma and the risks of exposure to gas, and to
those questions he had one totally convincing answer: he had been out
to France three times and on none of these occasions had he been


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invalided back to base or home to England because of asthma. Trench
fever, yes; wound, yes; shell-shock, yes. Asthma, no.

When the last question had been asked and answered, Mitchell drew
the papers together in front of him, and patted them into shape. Prior
watched the big white hands with their sprinkling of age spots and the
shadowing of hair at the sides.

'Right,' Mitchell said at last. 'I think that's all . . .'

The pause was so long Prior began to wonder whether he would
ever speak again.

'Your asthma's worse than you're letting on, isn't it?' He tapped the
discharge report. 'According to this anyway.'

'It was bad at Craiglockhart, sir. But I can honestly say it was worse
there than it ever was in France.'

'Well,' Mitchell said. 'Results posted this afternoon.' He smiled
briskly. 'You won't have long to wait.'


TWO


Crude copies of Tenniel's drawings from Alice in Wonderland decorated one end 
of Ward Seven, for in peacetime this had been a children's
hospital. Alice, tiny enough to swim in a sea of her own tears; Alice,
unfolding like a telescope till she was nine feet tall; Alice, grown so
large her arm protruded from the window; and, most strikingly, Alice
with the serpent's neck, undulating above the trees.

Behind Rivers, a creaking trolley passed from bed to bed: the
patients' breakfast dishes were being cleared away.

'Come on, Captain McBride, drink up,' Sister Roberts said, crackling
past. 'We've not got all day, you know.'

This was said loudly, for his benefit. He'd arrived on the ward too
early, before they were ready for him.

'You knew him, didn't you?' Elliot Smith said, coming up to him,
looking over his shoulder.

Rivers looked puzzled.

'Lewis Carroll.'

'Oh, yes. Yes.'

'What was he like?'


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THE GHOST ROAD

m

Rivers spread his hands.

'Did you like him?'

'I think I wanted him very much to like me. And he didn't.' A slight
smile. 'I'm probably the last person to ask about him.' ^

Elliot Smith pointed to the snake-neck. 'That's interesting, isn't it?' ^

'Ready now, Captain Rivers,' Sister Roberts said. They watched
her march off.

' "Captain," ' Elliot Smith murmured.

'I'm in the dog house,' Rivers said. 'I only get "Dr" when she
approves of me.'

Behind the screens Ian Moffet lay naked from the waist down. He
looked defiant, nervous, full of fragile, ungrounded pride. His skin had
a greenish pallor, though that might merely be the reflection of light
from the green screens that surrounded his bed, creating a world, a
rock pool full of secret life. Rivers pushed one screen back so that light
from the window flooded in. Now Moffet's legs, stretched out on the
counterpane, were the dense grey-white of big, cheap cod. Muscles
flabby but not wasted, as they would have been in a case of spinal
injury, though he'd been unable to walk for more than three months,
an unusually long time for hysterical paralysis to persist.

The history was, in one sense, simple. Moffet had fallen down in a
'fainting fit' while on his way to the Front, shortly after hearing the guns 
for the first time. When he recovered consciousness he could not
move his legs.

'It was ridiculous to expect me to go to the Front,' he'd said in their
first interview. 'I can't stand noise. I've never been able to stay in the
same room as a champagne cork popping.'

You poor blighter, Rivers had thought, startled out of compassion.
More than any other patient Moffet brought the words 'Pull yourself
together, man' to the brink of his lips.

'Why didn't you apply for exemption?' he'd asked instead.

Moffet had looked at him as if he'd just been accused of eating peas
from a knife. 'One is not a pacifist.'

He'd tried everything with Moffet. No, he hadn't. He'd not, for
example, tried attaching electrodes to Moffet's legs and throwing the
switch, as Dr Yealland would certainly have done by now. He'd not
held tubes of radium against his skin till it burnt. He'd not given him
subcutaneous injections of ether. All these things were being done to
get men back to the Front or keep them there. He'd not even hypnotized
him. What he'd actually tried was reason. He didn't like what he


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was going to do now, but it had become apparent that, until Moffet's
reliance on the physical symptom was broken, no more rational approach
stood any chance of working.

'You understand what I'm going to do?' he asked.

'I know what you're going to do.'

Rivers smiled. 'Tell me, then.'

'Well, as far as I can make out, you ... er ... intend to draw
Minute muscles twitched round Moffet's nose and lips, giving him the
look of a supercilious rabbit. 'Stocking tops? On my legs, here.' With
delicately pointed fingers he traced two lines across the tops of his
thighs. 'And then, gradually, day by day, you propose to ... um . . . lower the 
stockings, and as the stockings are unrolled, so to speak, the
... er ... paralysis will . . .' A positive orgy of twitching. 'Retreat.'

'That's right.'

Moffet's voice drooled contempt. 'And you have no doubt this
procedure will work?'

Rivers looked into the pupils of his eyes so intently that for a
moment he registered no colour except black. 'None whatsoever.'

Moffet stared at him, then turned away.

'Shall we get started?' Rivers lifted Moffet's left leg and began to
draw a thick black line on to his skin, two inches below the fold of the
groin.

'I hope that's not indelible.'

'Of course it's not. I'm going to have to wash it off in the morning.'

Rivers looked at the length of Moffet's legs and tried to calculate
how long it was going to take him to reach the toes. Two weeks? And
that would have to include Sundays, which put paid to his plans for a
weekend in Ramsgate with his sisters. Katharine was far from well; in
fact she was virtually bedridden and for much the same reasons as
Moffet. Rivers frowned with concentration as he carried the pencil
line under the thigh. Moffet's flabby skin kept snagging the pencil
point.

Elliot Smith's comment on the serpent: 'That's interesting.' It was
no more than he'd thought himself. Evidently snakes had lost the right
to be simply snakes. Dodgson had hated them, a quite exceptionally
intense hatred, and the woods round Knowles Bank were full of them,
particularly in spring when you regularly stumbled across knots of
adders, as many as thirty or forty sometimes, drowsy from their winter
sleep. They'd gone for a walk once, the whole family, Ethel and
Katharine holding Dodgson's hands, himself and Charles trailing


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behind, imitating his rather prissy, constipated-hen walk, though careful
not to let their father catch them at it. They rounded a bend,
Dodgson and the girls leading, and there, right in the centre of the
path, was a snake. Zigzag markings, black on yellow, orange eyes,
forked tongue flickering out of that wide, cynical (anthropomorphic
rubbish) mouth. Dodgson went white. He sat down, collapsed rather,
on a tree stump and the girls fanned him with their hats, while father
caught the snake in a cleft stick and threw it far away, a black s against
the sky unravelling as it fell.

Later he went back to look for it, spending an hour searching through
the flamy bracken, but only found a cast-otf skin draped over a stone,  .

transparent, the brilliant markings faded, the ghost of a snake.        |

Why was the devil shown in the form of a snake? he asked his
father, because it was the only question he knew how to ask.

Later there'd been other questions, other ways of finding answers.
Once, while he was home for the weekend, Katharine sat on an adder,
and ran home screaming. He'd gone straight out and killed it, or so he
thought, intending to dissect it at Bart's. Finding the family in the
drawing-room, he'd tipped the snake out on to the hearthrug to show
them, and found himself confronted by an adder that was very far
from dead. The girls screamed and hid behind the sofa, while he and
his father and Charles trampled it to death.

How do you think about an incident like that now? he wondered,
beginning the second circle. Probably every generation thinks the
world of its youth has been changed past recognition, but he thought
for his generation -- Moffet's too, of course -- the task of making
meaningful connections was quite unusually difficult. A good deal of
innocence had been lost in recent years. Not all of it on battlefields.

He lowered Moffet's leg and walked round the bed. From here he
could see, through a gap in the screens, the drawings of Alice. Suddenly,
with Moffet's paralysed leg clamped to his side as he closed the circle,
Rivers saw the drawings not as an irrelevance, left over from the days
when this had been a children's ward, but as cruelly, savagely appropriate.
All those bodily transformations causing all those problems. But
they solved them too. Alice in Hysterialand.

'There,' he said, putting the leg down. 'Now can you prop yourself
up a bit?'

Moffet raised himself on to his elbows and looked down at his
legs. 'Quite apart from anything else,' he said, enunciating each word
distinctly, 'it looks bloody obscene.'


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Rivers looked down. 'Ye-es,' he agreed. 'But it won't when we get
below the knee. And tomorrow the sensation in this area' -- he measured
it out with his forefingers -- 'will be normal.'

Their eyes met. Moffet would have liked to deny it was possible,
but his gaze shifted. He'd already begun to invest the circles with
power.

Rivers touched his shoulder. 'See you tomorrow morning,' he said.

Quickly, he ran downstairs and plunged into the warren of corridors,
wondering if he'd have time to read the files on the new patients
before the first of them arrived for his appointment. He glanced at his
watch, and something about the action tweaked his memory. Now
that would be 'interesting', he thought. An innocent young boy becomes
aware that he is the object of an adult's abnormal affection. Put
bluntly, the Rev. Charles Do-do-do-do-Dodgson can't keep his hands
off him, but - thanks to that gentleman's formidable conscience nothing
untoward occurs. The years pass, puberty arrives, friendship
fades. In the adult life of that child no abnormality appears, except
perhaps for a certain difficulty in integrating the sexual drive with the
rest of the personality (What do you mean 'perhaps'? he asked himself),
until, in middle age, the patient begins to suffer from the delusion that
he is turning into an extremely large, eccentrically dressed white rabbit,
forever running down corridors consulting its watch. What a case
history. Pity it didn't happen, he thought, pushing the door of his
consulting-room open, it would account for quite a lot.

He thought, sometimes, he understood Katharine's childhood better
than his own.

Cheshire Cat! Cheshire Cat! he and Charles had chanted as she sat
enthroned in Dodgson's lap, grinning from ear to ear. The nickname,
so casually bestowed, had lasted all her childhood, and his only consolation
was she hadn't minded it a bit. Poor Kath, she'd had little enough
to smile about since.

Files, he told himself. He took them out of his briefcase and started
to read. Geoffrey Wansbeck, twenty-two years old. Wansbeck had --
well, murdered, he supposed the word would have to be -- a German
prisoner, for no better reason (Wansbeck said) than that he was feeling
tired and irritable and resented having to escort the man back from the
line. For . . . eight months -- in fact, nearer ten -- he'd experienced no
remorse, but then, while in hospital recovering from a minor wound,
he'd started to suffer from hypnagogic hallucinations in which he
would wake suddenly to find the dead German standing by his bed.


443
THE GHOST ROAD


Always, accompanying the visual hallucination, would be the reek of
decomposition. After a few weeks the olfactory hallucination began to
occur independently, only now the smell seemed to emanate from
Wansbeck himself. He was convinced others could smell it and, no
matter how often he was reassured, avoided close contact with other
people as much as he could.

Hmm. Rivers took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, swinging his
chair round to face the window. He'd had a bad night and was finding
it difficult to concentrate. Late August sunlight, the colour of cider,
streamed into the room, and he was suddenly seized by sadness, a
banal, calendar-dictated sadness, for the past summer and all the
summers that were past.

At dinner one evening Mr Dodgson had leant across to mother and
said, '11-1-1-love all ch-chch-ch-'

'Train won't start,' Charles had whispered.

'Children, M-Mrs R-Rivers, as 1-1-1-long as they're gg-g-girls.'

He had looked down the table at the two boys, and it had seemed to
Rivers that the sheer force of his animosity had loosened his tongue.

'Boys are a mistake.'

Charles hadn't minded that Mr Dodgson disliked them, but he had.
Mr Dodgson was the first adult he'd met who stammered as badly as
he did himself, and the rejection hurt.

'Are w-we a m-m-m-m-mistake?' he'd asked his mother at bedtime.
'W-why are w-we?'

'Of course you're not a mistake,' his mother had said, smoothing the
hair back from his forehead.

'So w-why d-d-does h-he s-say w-w-w-w-we are?'

'I expect he just likes girls more than boys.'

'B--b-b-b-but w-w-why d-d-does he?'


Wansbeck's eyes were inflamed, whether from crying or because of his
cold was difficult to tell.

Rivers waited for the latest paroxysm of coughing to pass. 'You
know we don't have to do this now. I can equally well see you when
you're feeling better.'

Wansbeck wiped his raw nose on the back of his hand. 'No, I'd
rather get it over with,' He shifted in his seat, flicking his tongue over
cracked lips, and gazed fretfully round the room. 'Do you think we
could have the -window open?'

Rivers looked surprised -- in spite of the sunshine, the wind was


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THF. GHOST ROAD


bitingly cold - but he got up and opened the window, realizing, as lie
did so, that Wansbeck's request was prompted by his fear of the smell.
The breeze sucked the net curtains through the gap. Rivers went back
to his chair and waited.

'I used a bayonet I found on a corpse. We were going through a
wood, and there'd been a lot of heavy fighting. I remember the man I
took it from, he'd died with an expression of absolute agony on his
face. Big man, very dark, lot of blood round his nose, black, covered
with flies, a sort of ... buzzing moustache. I remember him better
than the man I killed. He was walking ahead of me, I couldn't do it in
his back, so I shouted at him to turn round. He knew straight away. I
stuck it in, and he screamed, and ... I pulled it out, and stuck it in.
And again. And again. He was on the ground and it was easier. He
kept saying, "Bitte, Bitte," and putting his hands . . .' Wansbeck raised
his own, palms outwards. 'The odd thing was I heard it in English.
Bitter, bitter. I knew the word, but I didn't register what it meant.'

'Would it have made a difference?'

A puckering of the lips.

'What were you thinking about immediately before you picked up
the bayonet?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing at all?'

'I just wanted to go to sleep, and this bastard was stopping me.'

'How long had you been in the line?'

'Twelve days.' Wansbeck shook his head. 'Not good enough.'

'What isn't good enough?'

'That. As an excuse.'

'Reasons aren't excuses.'

'No?'

Rivers was thinking deeply. 'What do you think I can do to help?'

'Nothing. With respect.'

'Oh, damn that.'

Wansbeck smiled. 'As you say.' He held his handkerchief to his
mouth as another fit of coughing seized him. 'I'll try not to give you
this at least.'

Wansbeck was a man of exceptionally good physique, tall, broad
shouldered, deep-chested. Rivers, estimating height, weight, muscular
tone, noting the tremor of the huge hands, a slight twitch of the left
eyelid, was aware, at a different level, of the pathos of a strong body
broken -- though he didn't know why the word 'broken' should occur


445
THE GHOST ROAD


1

to him, since, objectively speaking, Wansbeck's physical suffering
amounted to nothing more than a bad cold. He'd made a good recovery
from his wound.

'When did you first notice the smell?'

'In the hospital. Look, everybody goes on about the smell. I know there isn't 
one.' A faint smile. 'It's just I can still smell it.'

'When was the first time?'

'I was in a side ward. Three beds. One man quite bad, he'd got a
piece of shrapnel stuck in his back. He was called Jessop, not that it
matters. The other was a slight arm wound, and he was obviously
getting better and I realized there was a chance I'd be left alone with
Jessop. The one who couldn't move. And I started to worry about it,
because he was helpless and I knew if I wanted to kill him I could.'

'Did you dislike him at all? Jessop.'

'Not in the least. No.'

'So it was just the fact that he was helpless?'

Wansbeck thought a moment. 'Yes.'

'Were you left alone with him?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

A sound midway between a snort and a laugh. 'It was a long night.'

'Did you want to kill him?'

'Yes '

'No, think. Did you want to kill him or were you afraid of wanting
to kill him?'

Silence. 'I don't know. What difference does it make?'

'Enormous.'

'Afraid. I think. After that I asked if I could go on to the main ward.
And to answer your question, the first time I noticed the smell was the
following morning.' A long silence, during which he started to speak
several times before eventually saying, 'You know when I told the
doctor about not wanting to be left alone with Jessop, he said, "How
long have you suffered from homosexual impulses?"' A quick, casual
glance, but Wansbeck couldn't disguise his anger. 'I didn't want to to to fuck 
him, I wanted to kill him.'

'Does it still bother you to be alone with people?'

Wansbeck glanced round the room. 'I avoid it when I can.'

They exchanged smiles. Wansbeck put his hand up and stroked his
neck.

'Is your throat bothering you?'


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THE GHOST ROAD


'Bit sore.'

Rivers went round the desk and felt his glands. Wansbeck stared
past him with a strained look. Evidently the smell was particularly bad.
'Yes, they are a bit swollen.' He touched Wansbeck's forehead, then
checked his pulse. 'I think you'd be better off in bed.'

Wansbeck nodded. 'You know, I can tell the smell isn't real, because
I can still smell it. I'm too bunged up to smell anything else.'

Rivers smiled. He was starting to like Wansbeck. 'Tell Sister Roberts
I've told you to go to bed, and would she take your temperature,
please. I'll be up to see you later.'

At the door Wansbeck turned. 'Thank you for what you didn't say.'

'And what's that?'

' "It was only a boche -- if it was up to me I'd give you a medal.
Nobody's going to hang you for it." '

'You mean other people have said that?'

'Oh, yes. It never seems to occur to them that punishment might be
a relief.'

Rivers looked hard at him. 'Self-administered?'

'No.'

A fractional hesitation?

'Go to bed,' Rivers said. Till be up in a minute.'


After Wansbeck had gone, Rivers went to close the window, and
stood for a moment watching boys playing in the square. High sharp
cries, like seagulls.

'Are w-we a m-m-m-m-mistake? W-why are w-we?'

'Of course you're not a mistake,' his mother had said, smoothing the
hair back from his forehead.

'So w-why d-d-does h-he s-say w-w-w-w-we are?'

'I expect he just likes girls more than boys.'

'B--b-b-b-but w-w-why d-d-does he?'

Rivers smiled. I know, he thought, I know. Questions, questions.

'Boys are rough and noisy. And they fight.'

'B-b-but you h-h-have to to to f-f-f-ight, ss-sometimes.'

Yes.


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THE GHOST ROAD


THREE


Prior dawdled along, scuffing the sleeve of his tunic along the seawall,
looking out over the pale, level, filthy sands to -where the waves
turned. Silence was a relief after the jabber of tongues in the mess: who
was going out with the next draft, who was up for promotion, who
had been recommended for an ME. The eyes that slid to your chest
and then to your left sleeve. The cards, the gossip, the triviality, the
muck-raking, the rubbish -- he'd be glad to be shot of it all.

He was going back to France. He'd spent the evening writing to
people: Sarah, his mother, Charles Manning, Rivers. And the last
letter had reminded him of Craiglockhart, so that now he drifted
along, remembering the light flashing on Rivers's glasses, and the
everlasting pok-pok from the tennis courts that somehow wove itself
into the pattern of their speech and silence, as Rivers extracted his
memories of France from him, one by one, like a dentist pulling teeth.

He wondered what Rivers would think of his going back. Not
much.

The beach was dark below him. They were all gone, the munitions
workers and their girls, the war profiteers with stubby fingers turning
the pages of John Bull. German boats came in close sometimes. 'Not
close enough,' Owen had said, as they'd waited for the draft list to go
up on the wall. And he'd laughed, with that slightly alarmed look he
sometimes had.

A friendly, lolling, dog-on-its-back sort of sea. You could swim in
that and not feel cold. He started to wander along with no idea of
where his feet were taking him or why. After a few minutes he rounded
the headland and looked along the half-circle of South Bay at the
opposite cliffs, surmounted by their white Georgian terraces. Some of
his brother officers were up there now, living it up at the most expensive
of the town's oyster bars. He'd been there himself two nights ago,
but tonight he didn't fancy it.

Closer at hand were souvenir shops, coconut-shies, swing-boats,
funny hats, the crack of rifle fire, screams of terror from the haunted
house where cardboard skeletons leapt out of the cupboards with green
electric light bulbs flashing in the sockets of their skulls. If they'd seen
. . . Oh, leave it, leave it.

Behind him, along the road that led to the barracks, were prim


448
THE GHOST ROAD


boarding-houses with thick lace curtains that screened out the vulgarity
of day-trippers. You couldn't go for a walk anywhere in Scarborough
without seeing the English class system laid out before you in all its
full, intricate horror.

He heard a gasp of pain beside him, and a hand clutched his sleeve.
A red-haired woman, flashily dressed and alone. 'Sorry, love, it's these
shoes.' She smiled brightly at him. 'I keep going over on the heel.'

She rested her arms beside his on the railings, her right elbow lightly
touching his sleeve.

'No, thanks.'

'Why, you been offered summat?'

She muttered on. It had come to summat if a decent woman couldn't
have a rest without being . . . pestered. And who did he think he was
anyway? Couple of bits of gold braid, they think their shit smells of
violets 'I
don't pay.'

A whoop of laughter. 'Well, you're certainly not getting it free.'

He smiled, allowing a note of pathos to creep into his voice. 'I'm
going back to France next week.'

'Aw, piss off.'

For a moment he hoped she might take her own advice, but she
didn't. They stood side by side, almost touching, but he was miles
away, remembering Lizzie MacDowell and the first day of the war.
'Long Liz' they called her, for, among the girls who worked Commercial
Road, most of them reared in the workhouse, Lizzie's height -- a
full five feet no less - made her a giant. She was his best friend's
mother, a fact not at the forefront of his mind when he met her in a
back alley on his way home from the pub and told her he'd enlisted.

--      Good lad! she'd said.

Lizzie was a great enthusiast for the Empire. And somehow or other
he'd gone home with her, stumbling up the passage and into the back
bedroom, until finally, in a film of cooling sweat, they'd lain together
on the sagging bed, while the bedbugs feasted and a smell of urine rose
from the chamberpot underneath. She'd told him about her regulars.
One man came every month, turned a chair upside-down and shoved
each one of the four legs in turn up his arse. Didn't want her to do
anything, she said. Just watch.

--      Well, you know what a worry-guts I am. I keep thinking what'll I do if
he gets stuck?

--      Saw the bloody leg off.


449
THE GHOST ROAD


-- Do you mind, that's the only decent chair I've got.

'What's so funny?'

'Just thinking about an old friend.'

Money had not changed hands on that occasion. He'd been Lizzie's
patriotic gesture: one of seven. Poor Lizzie, she'd been very disillusioned
when five of the seven turned out not to have enlisted at all.

'Do you fancy a bit of company, then?'

He looked at her. 'You don't give up, do you?' And then suddenly
the shrieks, the rattle of rifle fire, pub doors belching smells of warm
beer were intolerable. Anything not to have to go on being the oil
bead on this filthy water. 'All right.'

She was telling the truth about her shoes. If she hadn't clung to his
arm she'd have fallen over more than once as they climbed the steep
steps to the quieter streets behind the foreshore.

'What do they call you?' she asked, breathing port into his face.

'Billy. You?'

'Elinor.'

I'll bet, he thought. The>' y' get "Nellie"?'

'Sometimes,' she said, her voice pinched with dignity. 'It's just
round the corner here.' Perhaps she sensed he was having second
thoughts for her arm tightened. ' 'S not far.'

They went up a flight of steps to the door. As she fumbled with the
key he looked round, and almost stumbled over a cluster of unwashed
milk bottles, furred green.

'Mind,' she said. 'You'll have everybody out.'

The hall dark, smelling of drains and mice. A face -- no more than a
slit of sallow skin and one eye -- peered through a crack in the door on
his left.

'You'll have to be quiet,' Nellie whispered, and then, catching sight
of the face just as the door closed, yelled, 'There's some right nosy
bastards round here.'

They walked up the stairs, arms round each other's waists, shoulders
and hips bumping in the narrow space, catching the breath of each
other's laughter, until her tipsiness communicated itself to him and all
doubt and reluctance dissolved away.

She unlocked the door. A naked overhead bulb revealed a tousled
bed, a chair piled high with camisoles and stays, a wash-stand and -- 
surprisingly businesslike, this -- a clean towel and a bar of yellow soap.

'You won't mind having a little wash.'

He didn't mind. He was buggered if he'd rely on it, though.


450
THE GHOST ROAD


'Do you know,' she said, unbuttoning her blouse, 'I had one poor
lad the other week washed his hands?'

Prior tugged at his tie, looking around for somewhere to put his
clothes, and noticed a chair by the fireplace. Rather a grand fireplace,
with a garland of flowers and fruit carved into the mantel, but boarded
up now, of course, and a gas fire set into it. He was pulling his half
unbuttoned tunic over his head when he noticed a smell of gas. Faint
but unmistakable. Tented in dark khaki, he fought back the rush of
panic, sweat streaming down his sides, not the gradual sweat of exercise
but a sudden drench, rank, slippery, hot, then immediately cold. He
freed himself from the tunic and went to open the window, looking
out over sharp-angled, moonlit roofs to the sea. He told himself there
was no reason to be afraid, but he was afraid. All the usual reactions:
dry mouth, wet armpits, skipping heart, the bulge in the throat that
makes you cough. Tight scrotum, shrivelled cock. Jesus Christ, he was
going to have to put a johnny on that, talk about a kid in its father's
overcoat. He heard his own voice, awkward, sounding younger than
he felt. 'I'm afraid this isn't going to work.'

'Aw, don't say that, love, it'll be al --'

Phoney warmth. She was used to pumping up limp pricks.

'No, it won't.'

He came back into the room and looked at her. Her hair had fallen
across her shoulders, not in a cloudy mass but in distinct coils, precise
crescents, like you see on the floor of a barber's shop. He picked up one
of the coils and wound it round his fingers. Red stripes marked the
places where the bones of her stays bit into the skin. Catching the
direction of his glance, she rubbed ineffectually at them. He wasn't
behaving as clients generally behaved, and any departure from the
usual run of things made her nervous. Two people's fear in the room
now. But her gaze remained steady, surprisingly steady, when you
thought that only five minutes ago she'd been too tipsy to walk straight. Now . 
. . well, she'd had a few, but she certainly wasn't drunk. Perhaps
she needed the mask of drunkenness more than she needed drink.

'Have I got a spot on the end of me conk or what?'

'No,' he said stupidly.

They stared at each other.

'Wouldn't hurt to lie down,' she said.

He finished undressing, reached out and tentatively took the weight
of her breasts in his hands. So far, he realized, he hadn't had the
shopping list, the awful litany that started whenever you met a


45i
THE GHOST ROAD


woman's eyes in Covcnt Garden or the Strand. '. . . and five bob extra
to suck me tits.'

'Two quid,' she said, reading his thoughts. 'On the table there.'

He got into bed, telling himself the cold damp patch under his left
buttock was imagination. He put his hand down. It wasn't. Dotted
here and there on the sheet were tiny coils of pubic hair. He wondered
whose spunk he was lying in, whether he knew him, how carefully
she'd washed afterwards. He groped around in his mind for the appropriate
feeling of disgust, and found excitement instead, no, more than
that, the sober certainty of power.

All the men who'd passed through, through Scarborough, through
her, on their way to the Front . . . And how many of them dead? As
she squatted over the bowl to wash -- a token affair, he was glad to see -- he 
felt them gathering in the hall, thronging the narrow stair, pressing
against the door. Halted on the threshold only by the glare of light.

'Can we have that out?' he said. 'It's in my eyes.'

And now they were free to enter. Waiting, though, till the springs
creaked and sagged beneath her weight. His hands were their hands,
their famished eyes were his. Pupils strained wide in starlight fastened
on a creamy belly and a smudge of dark hair. He stroked and murmured
and her fingers closed round him. 'There you are, you see. I told you
it'd be all right.'

He fucked her slowly. After a while her hands came round and
grasped his arse, nails digging in, though whether this was a pretence
to hurry things along or a genuine flicker of response he couldn't tell.
He was aware of their weight on him, his arms were braced to carry
it ...

And then something went wrong. He looked down at the shuttered
face and recognized the look, recognized it not with his eyes but with
the muscles of his own face, for he too had lain like this, waiting for it
to be over. A full year of fucking, before he managed to come, on the
narrow monastic bed, a crucifix above it, on the far wall -- he would
never forget it -- a picture of St Lawrence roasting on his grid. The first
time Father Mackenzie knelt, holding him round the waist, crying, We
really touched bottom that time, didn't we? One way of putting it, but we? What 
the fuck did he mean by wel Later -- though not much later, he'd
been a forward child -- he'd begun to charge, not so much resorting to
prostitution as inventing it, for he knew of nobody else who got
money that way. First Father Mackenzie. Then others.

The only way not to be her was to hate her. Narrowing his eyes, he


452
THE GHOST ROAD


blurred her features, ran them together into the face they pinned to the
revolver targets. A snarling, baby-eating boche. But they didn't want
that, the men who used his eyes and hands as theirs. He felt them
withdraw, like a wave falling back.

All right, then, for me. He lowered his forehead on to hers, knowing
without having to be told that she wouldn't let him kiss her. She
wriggled beneath him, and he lifted his weight. Slowly and deliberately,
she put her index finger deep into her mouth, and brought it out
with a startling pop, and then -- he had time to guess what she intended
- scratched the small of his back delicately so that he shivered and
thrust deeper, and rammed the finger hard up his arse. Ah, he cried,
more with shock than pleasure, but already he was bursting, spilling,
falling towards her, gasping for breath, laughing, gasping again, tears
stinging his eyes as he rolled off her and lay still. Hoist on his own
petard. That had always been one of his tricks to speed the unreasonably
lingering guest.

She got up immediately and squatted over the bowl. He took the
hint and started to dress, sniffing round the fireplace as he buttoned his
tunic.

'What's the marra with you?'

'I thought I could smell gas.'

'Oh that, yeh, you probably can. Tap leaks. I'm tired of telling her.'

He wouldn't do this again, he decided, buckling his belt. It might
work for some men, but . . . not for him. For him, it was all slip and
slither, running across shingle. He hadn't been sure at the end who was
fucking who. Even the excitement he'd felt at the idea of sliding in on
another man's spunk was ambiguous, to say the least. Not that he
minded ambiguity - he couldn't have lived at all if he'd minded that but
this was the kind of ambiguity people hide behind. And he was too
proud to hide.


On his way back to the barracks he forgot her. A few hundred yards
from the gate he drew level with a group of officers. Most had paced
themselves well, and were now rather more sober than they'd been
when he bumped into them earlier in the evening. But Dalrymple was
in a desperate state, striding along with the exalted, visionary look of
somebody whose sole aim in life is to get to the lavatory in time.

'Will he be all right?' Prior asked.

'We'll get him there,' said Bainbrigge.

As they entered the barracks gates, thunder rumbled on the horizon;


453
I

THE GHOST ROAD


the clouds were briefly lit by lightning. Prior waited till the crowd
cleared before going across to the main building to get washed, thinking,
as he stripped off and splashed cold water over his chest and groin,
that a deserted wash-room at night, all white tiles and naked lights, is
the most convincing portrayal of hell the human mind can devise. He
peered into the brown-spotted glass, remembering the moment when
Nellie's face had dissolved into the face of the boche target.

-- What's the worst thing you could have done? Rivers asked.

A phoney question. Rivers didn't believe in the worst things. He
thought Prior was being histrionic. And perhaps I was, Prior thought,
staring into the glass at the row of empty cubicles behind him, feeling
'the worst things' crowd in behind him, jostling for the privilege of   |

breathing down his neck. He'd even, coming to himself at four or five
o'clock in the morning with no idea of how the night had been spent,
thought it possible he might have killed somebody. And yet, why
should that be 'the worst thing'? His reflection stared back at him,
hollow-eyed. Murder was only killing in the wrong place.

The wind was rising as he hurried across the gritty tarmac to his
tent. Bent double, he braced himself to face the smell of armpits and
socks, heavy on the day's stored heat, for though they left the flaps
open, nothing could prevent the tents becoming ovens in hot weather.
He took a deep breath, as deep as he could manage, and crawled into
the stinking dark.

A voice said, 'Hello.'

Of course. Hallet. The past week he'd had the tent to himself,
because Hallet had been away on a bombing course in Ripon.

'Can you see all right?'

The beam of a torch illuminated yellow grass littered with cigarette
butts.

'I can manage, thanks.'

Blinking to reaccustom himself to the blackness, Prior wriggled into
his sleeping-bag.

'You're just back from London, aren't you?'

He resigned himself to having to talk. 'Yes. Week ago.'

A flicker of lightning found the whites of Hallet's eyes. 'Have you
been boarded yet?'

'Out next draft. You?'

'Next draft.'

Voice casual, but the mouth dry.

'First time?' Prior asked.


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THE GHOST ROAD


'Yes, as a matter of fact it is.'

Now that Prior was accustomed to the gloom he could see Hallet
clearly: olive-skinned, almost Mediterranean-looking, a nice crooked
mouth with prominent front teeth that he was evidently self-conscious
about, for he kept pulling his upper lip down to hide them. Quite
fetching. Not that in these circumstances Prior ever permitted himself
to be fetched.

'I'm really rather looking forward to it.'

The words hung on the air, obviously requiring an answer of some
kind, but then what could one say? He was scared shitless, he was right to be 
scared shitless, and any 'reassuring' remark risked drawing
attention to one or other of these unfortunate facts.

'Some of the men in my platoon have been out three times,' Hallet
said. 'I think that's the only thing that bothers me, really. How the hell
do you lead men who know more than you do?'

'You pray for a good sergeant. A really good sergeant tells you what
orders to give him, doesn't let anybody else see him doing it, and
doesn't let himself know he's doing it.'

'How many times have you -- ?'

This'll be the fourth. Wound, shell-shock, trench fever. Not in that
order.'

Hallet was lying on his back, hands clasped behind his head, nothing
much visible from Prior's angle except his chin. How appallingly
random it all was. If Hallet's father had got a gleam in his eye two
years later than he did, Hallet wouldn't be here. He might even have
missed the war altogether, perhaps spent the rest of his life goaded by
the irrational shame of having escaped. 'Cowed subjection to the ghosts
of friends who died.' That was it exactly, couldn't be better put.
Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making.
You learned to ration your commitment to them. This moment in this
tent already had the quality of remembered experience. Or perhaps he
was simply getting old. But then, after all, in trench time he was old. A
generation lasted six months, less than that on the Somme, barely
twelve weeks. He was this boy's great-grandfather.

He looked at Hallet again, at the warm column of his neck, and tried
to think of something to say, something light-hearted and easy, but
could think of nothing. He stared instead at the stained canvas, lit by
flickers of summer lightning, and noticed that the largest stain looked
like a map of Africa.


455
THE GHOST ROAD


FOUR


Two black lines circled Moffet's legs immediately above the knee.

'Close your eyes,' Rivers said. 'I want you to tell me exactly what
you feel.'

'Pinprick.'

'How many?'

The pins touched again.

'Two.'  f

Again.  *

'One.'

Again.

'Two.' Moffett sounded bored. 'Two. Two.' A pause. 'Not sure.'

'All right. You can open your eyes now.'

He hadn't lied once. He'd lain with closed eyes, a fluttering visible
beneath the thin lids, and Rivers had read in every line and fold of his
face the temptation to lie, and yet the progression of yeses and noes had
been totally accurate. True, he couldn't have hoped to lie convincingly,
or not for long, but it was interesting that he hadn't tried. This was
pure hysteria, uncontaminated by malingering.

'Rivers, do you ever think you were born into the wrong century?'

Rivers looked surprised. 'Survived into, perhaps.'

'It's just this reminds me of seventeenth-century witch-finders, you
know? They used to stick pins in people too.'

'I expect they were looking for the same thing. Areas of abnormal
sensation.'

'Do you think they found them?'

Rivers lifted Moffet's left leg and began to draw a line three inches
lower than the line he'd drawn yesterday morning. 'I don't see why
not. Some witches were probably hysterics. At least a lot of the reported
phenomena suggest that.'

'And the witch-finders?'

'I don't know. Simpler. Nastier.'

'I don't like that word. Applied to this.'

'Hysteria?' He could quite see that 'shell-shock', useless and inaccurate
though the term was, might appeal to Moffet rather-more. It did
at least sound appropriately male. 'I don't think anybody likes it. The
trouble is nobody likes the alternatives either.'


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THE GHOST ROAD


'It derives,' Moffet continued, hardening his voice, 'from the Greek hystera. 
The womb.'

'Yes,' Rivers said dryly. 'I know.'

The problem with Moffet was that he was too intelligent to be
satisfied with such a crude solution as paralysis. Hysterical symptoms
of this gross kind - paralysis, deafness, blindness, muteness - occurred
quite frequently in the immediate aftermath of trauma but they normally
lingered only in those who were either uneducated or frankly
stupid. Moffet was neither.

And whether this rather dramatic form of treatment was helping . . .
Oh, it would get rid of the paralysis, but was there not the possibility
that it might also reinforce a belief in magical solutions? Rivers sighed
and walked round the bed. All his instincts were against it, but he
knew it would get Moffet on his feet again. A witch-doctor could do
this, he thought, beginning to draw, and probably better than I can.
Come to think of it, there was one person who'd have done it
brilliantly . . .


In Melanesia he'd quickly formed the habit of accompanying Njiru on
his rounds. They would set off together, always in single file, because
the path winding through thick bush was too narrow for them to walk
abreast.

Seen from the rear, the extent of Njiru's spinal curvature was dreadfully
apparent. Rivers wondered how such deformities were explained
-- which spirit inflicted them, and why? Sweat stung his bitten eyelids -- he 
kept having to wipe his forearm across his face. Mainly the heat, but
partly also anxiety. It was a bit like your first day at a new school, he
thought, knowing you've got to get things right and that your chances
of getting them right are infinitesimal because you know nothing. Only
at school, provided you start at the same time as everybody else, you
can solve the problem by fading into the group, darting about with all
the other little grey minnows, safety in the shoal, but here he was
alone, except for Hocart, and Hocart had been running a fever ever
since they arrived, and today had chosen to stay behind in their tent.

At the village he crawled into a hut and squatted on the earth floor,
watching and listening, while Njiru attended to his patient. An old
woman, evidently a regular to judge by the way she and Njiru laughed
and joked together. She was introduced as Namboko Taru, though
'Namboko', which he at first took to be a name, turned out to be a
title: 'widow'. The same word also meant 'widower', but was not used


457
THE GHOST ROAD


as a title when applied to men. Two more disconnected facts to add to
his discouragingly small heap.

Namboko Taru lay down, pushing the strip of brown bark cloth she
wore down far enough to expose her belly. Njiru poured coconut oil
on to her abdomen and began a massage, while Rivers tried to find out
what was wrong. Constipation, it appeared. Was it, he wanted to ask,
in view of her age, chronic constipation, or had there been a recent
change in bowel habit? And was it simply constipation, or was there
alternating diarrhoea? But his attempts to convey 'alternating diarrhoea'
in a mixture of pidgin and mime threatened to bring the proceedings
to a halt entirely, and he gave up, while Namboko Taru wiped
tears of laughter from her cheeks. He might not be contributing to the
cure but he was certainly taking her mind off the condition.

Meanwhile the movements of Njiru's hands began to focus on a
region below and to the left of the navel. He was chanting under his
breath, swaying backwards and forwards, scooping the slack flesh together
between the heel of his palms, like a woman gathering dough.
The constant low murmur and the rhythmic movement were hypnotic.
Suddenly, with a barking cry, Njiru seemed to catch something,
shielded it in his cupped hands while he crawled to the door, and then
threw it as far as he could into the bush. A brief conversation between
doctor and patient, then Namboko Taru fastened her cloth and went
into the bush, from whence, ten minutes later, a far happier woman
emerged.

Meanwhile Rivers and Njiru talked. Namboko Taru's complaint
belonged to a group of illnesses called tagosow, which were inflicted by
the spirit called Mateana. This particular condition -- nggasin -- was
caused by an octopus that had taken up residence in the lower intestine,
from where its tentacles might spread until they reached the throat. At
this point the disease would prove fatal. As so often happened, one
could detect behind the native belief the shadowy outline of a disease
only too familiar to western medicine, though perhaps this was not a
helpful way of looking at it. Namboko Taru believed she was cured.
And certainly as a treatment for simple constipation the massage could
hardly have been bettered, and had not differed in any essential respect
from western massage, until very near the end.

Rivers pointed to himself and then to the coconut oil. Njiru nodded,
poured oil into his palms and began the massage, chanting, rocking . . .
Once again that curious hypnotic effect, a sense of being totally focused
on, totally cared for. Njiru was a good doctor, however many octopi


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he located in the colon. The fingers probed deeper, the chanting quickened,
the movements of the hands neared a climax, and then -- nothing.
Njiru sat back, smiling, terminating the physical contact as tactfully as
he'd initiated it.

Rivers sketched the movement Njiru hadn't made. 'You no throw
nggasin?'

A gleam of irony. 'You no got nggasin.'


But you have, Rivers thought, sponging yesterday's black lines off
Moffet's legs.

'And tomorrow,' he said authoritatively, measuring with his forefingers,
'this area will be normal.'

Moffet glared at him. 'You are consciously and deliberately destroying
my self-respect.'

'I think you'll find that starts to come back once you're on your
feet.'

Sister Carmichael was hovering on the other side of the screens,
waiting to snatch the trolley from him. She was shocked by his insistence
on doing everything himself, including the washing off of the
previous lines. Consultants do not wash patients. Nurses wash patients.
She would have been only marginally more distressed if she'd come on
to the ward and found him mopping the floor. What he could not get
across to her was that the rules of medicine are one thing, the rules of
ritual drama quite another.

Wansbeck had had a bad night, she said, once the trolley had been
snatched away. Temperature of 103, and he kept trying to open the
window.

'All right, I'll see him next.'

The nurses had just finished sponging Wansbeck down, and he lay
half naked, his skin a curdled bluish white against the snowy white of
the sheets. As Rivers watched a shiver ran along his arms and chest,
roughening and darkening the skin. They finished drying him, covered
him up, and he was free to talk, though too weak to manage more
than a few words.

Rivers was beginning to feel concerned about Wansbeck. Spanish
influenza was quite unusually virulent and he had it badly, and yet he
seemed indifferent to the outcome. Rivers grasped him firmly round
the wrist. 'You know you've got to fight this.'

Probably 'fight' was the only word he understood. 'Done enough of
that,' he muttered, and turned away.


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f!


THE GHOST ROAD


In Westminster the leaves were already beginning to turn. Not to the
brilliant reds and golds of the countryside, but a shabby tarnished
yellow. In another few weeks they would start to fall. The worst thing
about London was that summer ended so soon.
'You know, sometimes,' Rivers said carefully, his glasses flashing as
he turned back from the window, 'it helps just to go back and try to to
to to ... gather things together. So. Let's see if I've got this right. You
were in hospital after a riding accident --'

'Yes, that's right. I didn't notice the mare --'

' Yes. And while you were there, one of the nurses cut your penis off
and put it in ajar of formaldehyde in the basement.'

Telford shook his head. 'I didn't say for for . . .'

'Formaldehyde. No, I know you didn't. They don't use pickling
vinegar.'

'Ah, well, you see, you'd know that.'

A deep breath. 'Why do you think she did that?'

Telford shrugged. 'Dunno.'

'But you must have wondered. I mean it was quite an astonishing
thing to do, wasn't it?'

'Wasn't for me to ask questions.' Telford leant forward, delivering
what he obviously thought was the coup de grace. 'You wouldn't want
me teaching you ycwjob, would you?'

At the moment he'd have welcomed assistance from any quarter.
'Didn't the doctor say anything?'

'Not a dicky bird.'

'Telford.' Rivers clasped his hands. 'What do you pee out of?'

'M'cock, you stupid bugger, what do you pee out of?'

Rivers concentrated on straightening his blotter. 'I wonder if it
would help if we talked a little about women?'

It might have done. He was never to know. A few minutes later
Telford said, 'I can't say I care for the tone of this conversation,
Rivers. It may have escaped your notice, but we're not in a barracks.'
He stood up. 'God knows, the last thing I want to do is pull
rank, but I'd be grateful if you'd address me as Major Telford in
future.'

He went out, slamming the door.


Moffet lay back, eyes closed, grinding, 'Yes, yes, yes, yes,' as the pin
pricked his skin.

The usual routine, and yet something was different. The air of
) H C GHOST ROAD


indifference had gone. Deliberately, Rivers let the pin stray across the
line on to skin that should still have been numb.

'Yes, yes, yes.'

The pin stopped. Moffet opened his eyes and smiled wearily. 'You
can go all the way down if you like.' He closed his eyes again. Rivers
moved the pin down the leg at intervals of two inches. 'Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes.' Wearily now, each 'yes' coming precisely at the moment the pin
touched the skin. Over the shin, across the arch of the foot, down to
the tip of the big toe. 'YES.'

Moffet had yelled the word. Through the gap in the screens, Rivers
saw the other patients turn and stare at the shrouded bed. He put the
pin down. 'Well.'

He wasn't particularly surprised: the removal of hysterical paralysis
was often -- one might almost say generally -- as dramatic as the onset.
Moffet lay still, his face sallow against the whiteness of the pillow,
making no attempt to hide his depression, and indeed why should he?
His sole defence against the unbearable had been taken away and
nothing put in its place.

'When did this happen?'

'First thing.'

'Have you tried to walk?'

'Not yet.'

'Do you want to?'

'Seems the logical next step. So to speak.'

'Can you swing yourself round? Sit on the side.'

Rivers knelt and began massaging Moffet's calves, chafing the slack
flesh between his hands.

'I suppose I'm expected to be grateful.'

'No.' He stood up. 'All right, shall we try? Put your hands on my
shoulders.'

Moffet levered himself off the edge of the bed.

'How does it feel?'

'Don't know. Weird.'

'Do you want to try a few steps?' Awkwardly, like untalented
dancers, they shuffled across the floor, the curtains ballooning out
around them. Rivers put his hands up and loosened Moffet's grip. 'No,
you're all right, I've got you.' Two steps, then Moffet fell forward into
his arms. Rivers lowered him back on to the bed. 'I think that's
probably enough for now.'

Moffet collapsed against the pillows.


461
THE GHOST ROAD


'It's important to keep at it, but I wouldn't try it just yet without an
orderly.' He hesitated. 'You know we're going to have to talk about why this 
happened.'

He waited, but Moffet remained stubbornly silent.

Till be along again later.'


Later that afternoon, Major Telfbrd -- as he must now remember to
call him - sidled up and tapped him discreetly on the shoulder. 'Yes,
Major Telford, what is it?'

A conspiratorial whisper. 'Spot of bother in the latrines,'

Rivers followed him into the wash-room, wondering which bit of
Telford's anatomy had dropped off now.

Telford pointed to the bathroom. 'Chap's been in there ages.'

'Yes, but-'

'Keeps groaning. Well, he did -- stopped now.'

Rivers rattled the handle. 'Hello?'

'Tried that, it's locked.'

It couldn't be - there weren't any locks. Rivers lay down and
looked under the door. A lot of water had slopped on to the floor, he
could see an arm drooping over the edge of the bath -- a puffy, white
arm with blood oozing from the wrist. A chair had been wedged
under the door handle. He tried pushing it, but it was no use. He stood
up and kicked. The door was hardly thicker than cardboard -- the
bathrooms were mere cubicles put in cheaply when the War Office
adapted the hospital for military use - and the second kick broke the
hinges. He burst into the room, startled by his own face in the looking
glass. Moffet lay in the bath, pink water lapping the shining belly as it
rose and fell. Breathing anyway. His head had slipped to one side, but
his nostrils were clear of the water. A whisky bottle skittered across the
floor as Rivers knelt by the bath. Cuts on both wrists, superficial on
the right -- deep on the left. Loss of blood probably fairly heavy, but
you can never bloody well tell in water. He pushed Moffet's eyelids
up, smelled his breath, felt for the pulse . . .

'Dead, is he?' Telford asked cheerfully.

Dead drunk. 'I think he'll be all right.'

Lack of space was the problem. Barely enough room to squeeze
between the wash-basin and the bath at knee height. He had to bend
from the waist to get his hands round Moffet's chest and then his
fingertips slipped on the cold, plump skin. Telford stood, looking on.
THE GHOST ROAD


They heaved, but without co-ordination, Rivers finally managing to haul the 
shoulders out of the water just as Telford grew tired of
waiting and dropped the legs back in. They were gasping for breath,
shoulders bumping in the confined space.

'All right, together,' Rivers said. 'One, two . . .'

Moffet came clear, only to fall back with a splash, a great plume of
water flying up and drenching them both.

Till try to get m'leg under him,' Telford said.

They lifted again, and Telford stepped into the water so that Moffet
was balanced across his thigh, Rivers supporting the head and shoulders.
They froze like that, an improbable and vaguely obscene pieta. 'All right?' 
Rivers asked.

'Right, I've got him.'

They collapsed in a heap on the floor, blood from Moffet's left wrist
flowing more copiously now, bright, distinct drops splashing on to the
mottled tiles. Rivers dragged a clean towel off the rail and pressed it
hard against the deepest cut. 'There, you take over,' he said. 'I'll get
Sister Roberts. Just press now, no need for anything else. No tourniquets.'

'Shouldn't dream of it,' Telford said, fluffing his shoulders.

Rivers intercepted Sister Roberts on her way down the ward.
'Moffet,' he said, pointing behind him. 'He's slashed his wrists. We
need a wheelchair.'

He returned to find Telford entertaining the now semiconscious
Moffet with a story about an inexperienced groom who'd applied a
tourniquet to the leg of his favourite hunter. 'Gangrene set in, would
you believe? We had to shoot the poor sod.' Telford looked down at
the fluttering lids. 'And it was only a graze.'

Moffet flapped like a landed fish, moaned, vomited yellow bile.
Rivers tapped his cheek. 'Have you taken anything?'

Sister Roberts came creaking to the door with a wheelchair. Telford
looked up at her, horrified, whipped a flannel off the side of the bath
and draped it over Moffet's genitals.

'For God's sake, man,' Rivers snapped. 'She's a nurse.' Though with
Telford's history it probably wasn't Sister Roberts's modesty he
thought he was protecting. 'If you could get us a couple of blankets,'
he said, twisting in the narrow space.

Moffet's head lolled to one side as they hauled him into the chair and
wrapped blankets round him, though Rivers was beginning to suspect
he was less drowsy than he seemed.


463
THE GHOST ROAD


'Well,' he said, straightening up. 'I think I can manage now, Major
Telford. Thank you, you've been a great help.'

That's all right.' He looked down at Moffet and sniffed. 'Helps
break up the afternoon. Anyway, what's all this Major nonsense?' he
demanded, punching Rivers playfully in the biceps. 'Don't be such a
stuffed shirt, man.'

And off he went, whistling 'A Bachelor Gay Am I'.

They wheeled Moffet into a side ward, since nothing is worse for
morale on a 'shell-shock' ward than a suicide attempt. Except a successful
suicide of course. He remembered the man at Craiglockhart who'd
succeeded in hanging himself. Quite apart from his own tragedy he'd
undone weeks of careful work on other people.

The deepest gash required stitching. Rivers set to work immediately,
and was rather surprised to find Moffet stoical. He watched the needle
dip in and out, only licking his lips once towards the end.

'There,' Rivers said. 'All done.'

Moffet rolled his head restlessly. 'I didn't make a very good job of
it, did I?'

'Not many people do. The only person I've ever known to succeed
by that method was a surgeon -- he virtually severed his left hand.' He
got up and stretched his legs, pressing a hand hard into the small of his
back. 'How much whisky did you have?'

'Haifa bottle. Bit more perhaps.'

No point talking to him, then.

'Where did you get it?'

'My mother. Does it matter?'

'And the razor?'        a

Moffet looked puzzled. 'Mine.'

'All right. You try to get some sleep.'

'Will you have to tell the police?'

'No.' Rivers looked down at him. 'You're a soldier. You're under
military discipline.'

He found Sister Roberts waiting for him. 'I'm afraid we can't let
this go,' he said. 'The lockers are supposed to be searched regularly.'

'I'll ask Miss Banbury. She was the last person to do it.'

She was also Sister Roberts's bete noire, for no better reason than that
she was well-meaning, clumsy, enthusiastic, unqualified and upper
class.

'His mother gave him the whisky.'

'Can't say I'm surprised. Silly woman.'


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THE GHOST ROAD


Sister Roberts, as he knew from numerous air-raid conversations of
the previous winter, was the eldest girl in a family of eleven. She'd
clawed her way out of the Gateshead slums and therefore felt obliged
to believe in the corrosive effects on the human psyche of good food,
good housing and good education.

'Telford was a bit of a revelation, wasn't he?' she said. 'Surprisingly
cool.'

'Oh, Telford's fine. Until he opened his big mouth nobody noticed
he was mad.' He added, not entirely as an afterthought, 'He works at
the War Office.'

Outside in the corridor he met Wansbeck, now much better though
surely not well enough to be up and about.

'How do you feel?' Rivers asked.

'Bit weak. Throat's still sore, but I'm not coughing as much.'

'You'd be better off in bed. Go on, back with you.'

As the doors banged shut behind Wansbeck, Rivers became aware
of an insistent clicking. Nothing to account for it. The long corridor
stretched ahead, empty, its grey, palely shining floor faintly marked
with the shadows of the window frames. Click, click, click. And then
he realized the sound was being caused by the bobbles on the end of
the blind strings, tapping against each other in the slight breeze. But
identifying the sound didn't seem to lessen its potency. It was almost
the sound of a yacht's rigging, but the memory went deeper than that.

He had reached the lift before he managed to dredge it up. That
day Njiru took him to see the skull houses at Pa Na Gundu, they'd
walked for miles in sweltering heat, scarcely a breath of wind, and no
sound except the buzzing of flies. Then, abruptly, they came out into
a clearing, sharp blades of sunlight slanting down between the trees,
and ahead of them, rising up the slope, six or seven skull houses, their
gratings ornamented with strings of dangling shells. The feeling of
being watched that skulls always gave you. Dazzled by the sudden
light, he followed Njiru up the slope, towards a knot of shadows,
and then one of the shadows moved, resolving itself into the shape of
Nareti, the blind mortuary priest who squatted there, all pointed
knees and elbows, snail trails of pus running from the corners of his
eyes.

The furthest of the skull houses was being repaired, and its occupants
had been taken out and arranged on the ground so that at first sight the
clearing seemed to be cobbled with skulls. He'd hung back, not sure
how close he was permitted to approach, and at that moment a sudden


465
THF GHOST ROAD


fierce gust of wind shook the trees and all the strings of votary shells
rattled and clicked together.

The lift doors clanged open in his face, startling him back into the
present day.


FIVE


Ada Lunib always wore black, less in mourning for her husband -- if
she'd ever had one -- than because black enabled an air of awesome
respectability to be maintained at minimal cost.

Respectability was Ada's god. She'd arrived in this neighbourhood
eighteen years before, recently widowed, or so she claimed, with two
pretty, immaculately dressed little girls in tow. The house had belonged
to a man called Dirty Dick, who rambled and muttered and frightened
children on street corners. Yellowing newspapers were stacked high in
every room. Within a few weeks Ada had the house painted, doorstep
scrubbed, range black-leaded, net curtains up at every window. At a
safe distance from the house, she bought a lock-up shop, selling boiled
boots, second-hand clothes and -- below the counter -- a great variety
of patent medicines designed to procure abortion or cure clap. Pennyroyal
Syrup, Dr Lawson's Cure for Female Blockages and Obstructions,
Dr Morse's Invigorating Cordial, Curtis's Manhood, Sir Samuel
Hannay's Specific, Bumstead's Gleet Cure, The Unfortunate's Friend,
and Davy's Lac-Elephantis, a foul-smelling suspension of chalk and
God knows what, which claimed to be the medicated milk of
elephants.

But on Sundays she locked up the shop and entertained the Vicar,
the Rev. Arthur Lindsey, in a room which might have been designed
as a stage set for the purpose. Dark oak furniture, plants with thick,
durable, rubbery leaves -- Ada had no patience with flowers, always
drooping and dying -- and, prominently displayed on a side table, the
family Bible, open at a particularly fortifying text. In this setting Ada
poured tea into china cups, dabbed her rat trap of a mouth with a
starched napkin and engaged in light, or, in deference to the Sabbath,
improving conversation on the topics of the day.

Billy Prior sat at the other end of the table, a concession to his new


466
THE GHOST ROAD


status as future soii-iii-law. No more material concessions had been
forthcoming: he and Sarah had not been left alone together for a
second. Though Ada was gratified by the engagement. She believed in
marriage, the more strongly, Prior suspected, for never having sampled
it herself. You don't know that, he reminded himself. But then he looked
round the room and thought, Yes, I do. Photographs of Sarah and
Cynthia stood on the sideboard, but none of the grandparents, none of
their father. No portrait of Ada-the-blushing-bride. And the fortifying
text she'd selected for display was the chapter of the Book of Job in
which Eliphaz the Temanite visits his friend and seeks to console him
for the plague of boils which covers his skin from crown to sole by
pointing out that he had it coming. One thing Ada did have was a sense
of humour. Oh, and an eye for male flesh. Yesterday he'd helped her
hang curtains, and her gaze on his groin as she handed the curtains up
had been so frankly appraising he'd almost blushed. You might fool
Lindsey, he thought, but you don't fool me.

He made an effort to attend to the conversation. They were talking
about the granting of the vote to women of thirty and over, an act of
which Ada strongly disapproved. It had pleased Almighty God, she
said, to create the one sex visibly and unmistakably superior to the
other, and that was all there was to be said in the matter. From the way
Lindsey simpered and giggled, one could only assume he thought he
knew which sex was meant. He was one of those Anglo-Catholic
young men who waft about in a positive miasma of stale incense and
seminal fluid. Prior knew the type - biblically as well.

Sarah touched the teapot, and stood up. 'I think this could do with
freshening. Billy?'

'Does it take two of you, Sarah?'

'I need Billy to open the door, Mother.'

In the kitchen she burst out, 'Honestly, what century does she think
she's living in?'

Prior shrugged. From the kitchen window Melbourne Terrace
sloped steeply down, a shoal of red-grey roofs half hidden in swathes
of mist and rain. He wondered whether Ada had taken this house for
the view, for the sweep of cobbled road, the rows and rows of smoking
chimney-stacks, was as dramatic in its way as a mountain range, and,
for Ada, rather more significant. For there, below her, was the life
she'd saved her daughters from: scabby-mouthed children, women
with black eyes, bedbugs, street fights, marriage lines pasted to the
inside of the front window to humiliate neighbours who had none of


467
THE GHOST ROAD


their own to display. He could quite see how the vote might seem
irrelevant to a woman engaged in such a battle.

Sarah came across and joined him by the window, putting her arms
round his chest from behind and resting her face against his shoulder. 'I
hope it's nicer tomorrow. You haven't had much luck with the
weather, have you?'

Wasn't all he hadn't had. He turned to face her. 'When are we going
to get some time alone?'

'I don't know.' She shook her head. 'I'll work something out.'

'Look, you could pretend to go to work, and --'

'I can't pretend to go to work, Billy. We need the money. Come on,
she'll be wondering where we are.'

Prior found a plate of lardy cake thrust into his hand, and followed
her back into the front room.

They found Lindsey confiding his ideas for next week's sermon -- he
was attracted to the idea of sacrifice, he said. Are you indeed? thought
Prior, plonking the plate down. Cynthia, not long widowed, was
hanging on every word, probably on her mother's instructions: she
was by far the more biddable of the two girls. Sitting down, Prior
nudged Lindsey's foot under the table and was delighted to see a faint
blush begin around the dog collar and work its way upwards. A
sidelong, flickering glance, a brushing and shying away of eyes, and
. . . You're wasting your lardy cake on that one, Ma, Prior told his future
mother-in-law silently, folding his arms.


After Lindsey had gone, Ada changed into her weekday dress and
settled down with a bag of humbugs and a novel. She sat close to the
fire, raising her skirt high enough to reveal elastic garters and an
expanse of white thigh. As her skirt warmed through, a faint scent of
urine rose from it, for Ada, as he knew from Sarah, followed the old
custom and when taken short in the street straddled her legs like a mare
and pissed in the gutter. His being allowed to witness these intimacies
was another concession to the ring on Sarah's finger.

The young people gathered round the piano, and, after the requisite
number of hymns had been thumped and bellowed through, passed on
to sentimental favourites from before the war.

'You'll know this one, Ma,' Prior said, drawing out the vowel sounds,
ogling her over his shoulder. Rather to his surprise, she sang with
him.

be.
468
THE GHOST ROAD


For her beauty was sold,

For an old man's gold,

She's just a bird in a gilded cage!


'By heck, it was never my luck,' Ada said, going back to her book.

Prior glanced at his watch. 'Do you fancy a turn round the block?'
he asked Sarah, closing the piano lid.

'Yes.' A quick glance at Cynthia.

'I'm too tired,' said Cynthia.

'You're never thinking of walking in this?' Ada said. 'Listen at it. It's
blowing a gale.'

It was too.

'Anyway it's work tomorrow, our Sarah,' Ada said, closing her
book. 'I think we'd all be better for an early night. Are you comfortable
on that sofa, Billy?'

'Fine, thank you.' Except there's this ruddy great pole sticking into
the cushions.

'You might try lying on your back.'

They'd have burnt her in the Middle Ages. Sarah brought down
blankets and pillows from her bedroom, and, watched by Ada from
the foot of the stairs, kissed him chastely goodnight.

It's my embarkation leave, he wanted to howl. We're engaged.

The door closed behind her. He wasn't ready for bed -- or rather he
wasn't ready for bed alone. He took off his tunic and boots, wandered
round the room, looked at photographs, finally threw himself on to
the sofa and picked up Ada's discarded novel.

Ada had a great stock of books. A few romances, which she read
with every appearance of enjoyment, gurgles of laughter erupting
from the black bombazine like a hot spring from volcanic earth. But
she preferred penny dreadfuls, which she read propped up against the
milk bottle as she prepared the evening meal. Fingerprints, translucent
with butter, encrusted with batter, sticky with jam, edged every page.
Bloody thumbprints led up to one particularly gory murder. All the
books had murders in them, all carried out by women. Aristocratic
ladies ranged abroad, pushing their husbands into rivers, off balconies,
over cliffs, under trains or, in the case of the more domestically inclined,
feminine type of woman, remained at home and jalloped them to
death. Only the final pages were free of cooking stains, and for a long
time this puzzled him, until he realized that, in the final chapter, the


469
The GHOST ROAD


adulterous murderesses were caught and punished. Ada had no truck
with that. Her heroines got away with it.

The clock ticked loudly, as it had done all last night, a malevolent
tick that kept him awake. He picked it up, intending to put it in the
kitchen, but it stopped at once and only resumed its ticking when he
replaced it on the mantel shelf. For Christ's sake, he thought, even the
bloody clock's trained to keep its knees together.

He could hear the girls getting undressed in the room overhead: the
thump of shoes being kicked off, snatches of conversation, giggles,
almost -- he convinced himself-- the sigh of petticoats dropping to the
floor. Sarah's momentary nakedness, before the white shroud of nightdress
came down. He got up and went to the piano, stroking the keys,
singing under his breath.


Far, far from Wipers
I long to be,
Where German snipers
Can't get at me.


Damp is my dugout,
Cold are my feet
Waiting for Whizzbangs
To put me to sleep.


The door opened. He turned and saw Sarah, a white column of nightgown,
a thick plait hanging down over her left shoulder.

'I'm sorry,' he said, closing the piano. 'Have I been making too
much noise?'

'No, I just wanted to see you.'

Incredibly, impossibly, the sound of girlish whispering and giggling
continued overhead.

'Cynthia,' Sarah said, closing the door. 'She's pretending I'm still
there.'

She knelt on the hearthrug, and began feeding the few remaining
sticks of wood into the fire. Then, carefully, so as not to douse the
flames, she dropped shiny nuggets of coal into the fiery caverns the
dying fire had made. A hiss, for the coal was damp after recent rain,
and, for a moment, the glow on her face and hair darkened, then
blazed up again.

'We seem to keep missing each other,' she said.

'You mean we're kept apart.'


470
THE GHOST ROAD


That amazing hair, he thought. Even now, when it was all brushed
and tamed for bed, he could see five or six different shades of copper,
auburn, bronze, even a strand of pure gold that looked as if it must
belong to somebody else.

She turned to look at him. 'It's her house, Billy.'

'Have I said anything?'

The firelight, gilding her face, disguised the munitions-factory
yellow of her skin.

'We could get married by special licence,' he said. 'At least I suppose
we could, I don't know how long it takes.'

'No, we couldn't.'

No, he thought, because after the war things'll be different, I could
be getting on in the world, I might not want to be saddled with a wife
from Beale Street. I have to be protected from myself. Sarah had a
great sense of honour. About as much use to a woman as a jockstrap,
he'd have thought, but there it was, Sarah was saddled with it. 'I love
you, Sarah Lumb.'

'I love you, Billy Prior.'

She leant back, and he unbuttoned her night-dress, pushing it off her
shoulders so that the side of one heavy breast was etched in trembling
gold. He slid to the floor beside her and took her in his arms, feeling
her tense against him. 'It's all right, it's all right.'

And all he wanted, at that moment, was to hide his face between her
breasts and shut out the relentless ticking of the clock. But a voice
above shouted, 'Sarah? Cynthia? Time you were asleep.'

'I'll have to go.'

'All right.'

But his hands refused to loosen their grip, and she had to pull herself
away.

'Look, tomorrow night she goes to the spuggies. I'll tell her I've got
a headache, and see if I can stay here.'


Next morning, after they'd all gone to work, he went upstairs to
Sarah's room, exhausted after another bad night measured by the chiming
of the clock. He needed to lie in the bed where Sarah slept, to wrap
himself in these stained sheets, for even in this fanatically clean household
the girls' skins sloughed off, staining the sheets yellow, and no
amount of washing would get the stains out. He didn't mind. He
would lie happily here, in the trough made by her body during the
night, smelling the faint smell of lavender and soap.


47i
Ufi tine bedside table was a photograph of himself, taken when he
was first commissioned. Unformed schoolboy face. Had he ever been
as young as that? Undressed and in bed, he squinted at the half-drawn
curtains, wondering if it was worth the effort of getting up to close
them. No, he decided, he would simply turn his back to the light.

He turned over, and for a second closed his eyes, his brain not
immediately interpreting what in that brief glance he had seen. Then
he sat up. On the dresser stood a photograph of a young man in
uniform, a private's uniform. Not Cynthia's husband -- he knew his
face from wedding groups. He got out of bed and went to look.
Johnny, of course. Who else? Sarah's first fiance.

The usual inanely smiling face half whited out by the sun. Behind him, a few 
feet of unbombed France. And why should he begrudge
this? Because I thought I'd taken his place. He hadn't even thought it,
he'd just assumed it. She'd talked only once about Johnny and then
she'd been drunk on the port he'd been plying her with to get her
knickers off. Loos. That was it. Gas blown back over the British lines.
He peered again at the unknown face. The whiting out seemed almost
to be an unintended symbol of the oblivion into which we all go.
Last night, he'd wondered what colour Sarah's skin had been under
the jaundice produced by the chemicals she worked with. This man
had known. He'd known this Sarah - picking up a snapshot - this
happy, slightly plump, hoydenish girl struggling to keep her skirts
down on the boat-swing. What you noticed in Sarah now was the
high rounded forehead, the prominent cheekbones, the bright, cool
amused gaze. Always the sense of something being held back. He'd
been looking all along at a face scoured out by grief, and he'd never
known it till now.


'Nice walk in the fresh air,' Ada said, spearing black felt with a hat-pin.
Just the thing for a headache.'

'I won't be in the fresh air, Mam. That room gets awfully stuffy,
you know.'

Ada bent down, thrusting her face into her daughter's. 'Sarah, go
and get your coat.'

Sarah looked at Billy and shrugged slightly.

'I'll come too,' he said, standing up.

'Are you sure?' Ada asked. 'The spuggies aren't everybody's cup of
tea.'

'Wouldn't miss it for the world.'


472
THE GHOST ROAD


They walked down the street together, Ada leading the way, sweeping
along in her black skirt, for in the matter of skirt length she made
no concessions to the present day. She glided along as if on invisible
casters.

'I suppose she does know contacting the dead's a heresy?' Billy
asked. 'The Vicar wouldn't like it.'

'Oh, she doesn't believe in it. She only goes for the night out.'

The meeting was held above a shop that sold surgical appliances, a
range of products whose advertising is necessarily discreet. The
window, lined with red and green crepe paper left over from Christmas,
contained nothing but a picture of a white-haired man swinging
his granddaughter above his head.

They went up a narrow staircase into a tiny room. A piano, a table
with a vase of flowers, five or six rows of chairs, net curtains whose
shadows tattooed skin. They couldn't find four seats together and so
Prior found himself sitting behind Sarah.

'How's your headache, Sarah?' Ada asked.

'Bit better, thank you, Mam.'

How's your ballsache, Billy? Bloody awful, thank you, Ma.

A man walked up and stood on the rostrum, looking carefully
round the room. Counting the penny contributions to tea and biscuits?
Assessing the general level of credulity? Or was he perhaps not a rogue
at all but simply mad? No, not mad. A small, self-satisfied man with
brown teeth.

Prior followed his gaze round the room, as the blinds were drawn
down, shutting out the sun. Women, mostly in black, a scattering of
men, all middle aged or older, except one, whose hands and face
twitched uncontrollably. Too many widows. Too many mothers looking
for contact with lost sons -- and this was an area where they'd all
joined up together. Whole streets of them, going off in a day. And this
man, smoothing down his thin hair, announcing the number of the
hymn, had known them all - birthmarks, nicknames, funny little
habits -- he knew exactly what every woman in this room wanted to
hear. Fraud, Prior thought, and that he deceived himself made it no
better.


Angels of Jesus, Angels of Light

Singing to we-elcome the pilgrims of the night.


They sat down with the usual coughs, chair scrapings, tummy rumbles,
and he stood in front of them, establishing the silence, deepening it.


473
THE GHOST ROAD


At last he was ready. Their loved ones were with them, he said, they
were present in this room. The messages started coming. First a description,
then a flicker of the eyes in the direction of the woman whose
husband or son he had been describing, then the message. Anodyne
messages. They were having a whale of a time, it seemed, on the other
side, beyond this vale of tears, singing hymns, rejoicing in the Lamb,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. Ah, yes, Prior
wanted to ask, but how's the fucking?

Then, without warning, the twitching man stood up and started to
speak. Not words. A gurgling rush of sound like the overflow of a
drainpipe, and yet with inflections, pauses, emphases, everything that
speech contains except meaning. People turned towards him, watching
the sounds jerk out of him, as he stood with thrown-back head and
glazed eyes. The man on the rostrum was wearing a forced, sickly
smile. One hysteric upstaged by another. I'd take the pair of you on,
Prior thought.

He touched Sarah's shoulder. 'I can't stand any more of this. I'll wait
outside.'

He ran downstairs, then crossed the street and slipped into the alley
opposite, positioning himself midway between two stinking midden
holes. He lit a cigarette and thought glossolalia. 'A spiritual gift of no
intrinsic significance, unless the man possessing it can interpret what he
receives in a way that tends to the edification of the faithful.' Father
Mackenzie, preparing him for Confirmation, when he was . . . eleven
years old? Twelve? What a teacher the man was - in or out of his
cassock.

From his vantage point, watching like a stranger, he saw Sarah
come out and look up and down the empty road.

'Sarah.'

She ran across, face pale beneath the munitions-factory yellow.
'What happened?'

'Nothing. I couldn't stand it, that's all.' A pause. 'We have to die,
we don't have to worship it.'

They stood together, looking up and down the street, which was
dotted here and there with puddles of recent rain. Fitful gleams of
sunlight.

'I'm not going back in.'

'No.'

She waited, still worried.

'We could go back home,' she said.


474
r


THE GHOST ROAD


'Have you got a key?'

'Yes.'

They stared at each other.

'Come on,' he said, grabbing her arm.

They ran along the shining street, splashing through puddles, Sarah's
hair coming loose in a cascade of pins, then down an alley where white
sheets bellied and snapped, shirt-sleeves caught them, wet cotton stung
their faces and necks. They arrived at the door red-faced, Sarah's hair
hanging in rat's-tails down her back.

She rattled the key in the lock, while he stood looking back the way
they'd come, half expecting to see Ada hurtling towards them on her
Widow-of-Windsor casters. They half fell into the passage, and he ran
towards the stairs. 'No,' she said. No, he thought. The front room,
then. He made to pull the curtains across. 'No, don't do that, they'll
think somebody's dead. Behind the sofa.' He was already on his knees
in front of her, his hands under her skirt, groping for the waistband of
her drawers, pulling them down, casting them aside, he didn't care
where they fell. At the last moment he thought, This isn't going to
work. They'd had to leave the front door open -- it would be impossible
to explain why it was locked -- but the thought of Ada Lumb looking
down at your bare arse was enough to give a brass monkey the wilts.

'Careful,' Sarah said, as he went in.

But he's always careful, always prepared -- though never prepared
for the surge of joy he feels now. He's like some aquatic animal, an
otter, returning to its burrow, greeting its mate nose to nose, curling
up, safe, warm, dark, wet. His mind shrinks to a point that listens for
footsteps, but his cock swells, huge and blind, filling the world. His
thrusts deepen and quicken, but then he forces himself to pull back, to
keep them shallow, a butterfly fluttering that he knows she likes. Her
hands come up and grasp his buttocks -- always a moment of danger --
and for a while he has to stop altogether, hanging there, mouth open.
Then, cautiously, he starts again. Cords stand out in her neck, her belly
tightens, the fingers clutching his arse are claws now. She groans, and
he feels the movement of muscles in her belly. Another groan, a cry,
and now it's impossible to stop, every thrust as irresistible as the next
breath to a drowning man. She raises her legs higher, inviting him
deeper, and he tries not to hear the desperation in her gasps, the
disappointment in her final cry, as he spills himself into her.

'Yes?' he gasps, as soon as he can speak.

'No.'



475
THE GHOST ROAD


Oh God. He drives himself on, thrusting away in a frictionless
frenzy, his knob a point of fire, feeling her teeter teeter on the brink,
and then at last at last tip over, fall, clutching and throbbing round his
shrinking cock till he cries out in pain. Oh, but she's there, she's
laughing, he hears her laughter deep in his chest.

Only his groin's wet, too wet. He lifted himself off her and looked
down. Spunk, beaten stiff as egg-white, streaked their hair, flecks of
foam on a horse's muzzle, spume blown back from the breaking wave,
but to him it meant one thing. The johnny -- unfortunate word in the
circumstances - was still inside Sarah. He hooked it out, and they
stared at it.

Sarah felt inside. 'I think I'm all right,' she said. 'It's all outside.'
No oiled casters, but a firm tread approached the house. He flung
the rubber into the fire, a million or so Billies and Sarahs perishing
in a gasp of flame. Small bloody comfort if another million were
still inside her. She pulled her skirts down and sat, sweating and desperate,
in her mother's chair. He was about to sit down himself when
he caught sight of her drawers thrown across the family Bible, one
raised leg drawing a decent veil over Job and his boils. He snatched
them up and stuffed them down the neck of his tunic, which left him
no time for his flies. He picked up the Bible and sat with it in his lap.

'Well,' Ada said. 'What happened to you?'

Sarah said, 'Billy started thinking about a friend of his, Mam.'

Prior sat with his head on one hand, a passable imitation of David
mourning Jonathan.

Ada sniffed. 'I see you've not thought to put the kettle on, our
Sarah. It's a true saying in this life, if you want anything doing do it
yourself.'

She went into the kitchen. Cynthia, glancing timidly from one to
the other, sat down on the edge of the sofa. Billy pulled Sarah's
drawers out of his tunic and threw them across to her. Cynthia squealed,
bunching her clothes between her legs like a little girl afraid of wetting
herself. Sarah calmly stood up and put the drawers on, while Prior
fumbled with buttons beneath the Bible.

Ada came back into the room. 'You missed a good show,' she said.
'Mrs Roper had to be carried out. Still, no doubt you've been better
employed.' She indicated the Bible.

'I was just trying to find the bit about the war-horse to show Sarah.
But it's all right, I know it off by heart.' He looked straight at Ada. 'He
paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the


476
THE GHOST ROAD


armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back
from the sword. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the
battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.'

He got up and replaced the Bible, aware of three faces gawping at
him. An odd moment. 'And now if you don't mind,' he said, 'I think
I'd like to lie down.'


Sarah was allowed to go to the railway station with him unaccompanied.
They stood on the empty platform, exhausted mentally and
physically, obliged to cherish these last moments together, both
secretly, guiltily wanting it to be over.

He picked up her hand and kissed the ring. 'Don't worry, Sarah.'
'I'm not worried.' She smiled. 'This time next year.'
He hadn't thought about the actual marriage at all, once she'd made
it clear she didn't want a quick wedding. Next year was a lifetime
away. Perhaps even a bit more. He watched a pigeon walk along the
edge of the platform, raw feet clicking on the concrete. 'Come on,' he
said. 'Let's walk along.'

They stopped under the shelter of the roof, for there was a fine rain
blowing. White northern light filtered through sooty glass. Sarah's
face pinched with cold.

'Write as soon as you get there,' she said.
'I'll write from London. I'll write on the train if you like.'
She smiled and shook her head. 'I'm glad you told your mam
anyway.'

'She was delighted.'
She was horrified.

--      Marrying a factory girl not that it matters of course as long as you're
happy but I'd've thought you could have done a bit better for yourself than 
that.

His father was incredulous.

--      Married? You?

--      Oscar Wilde was married, Dad, Prior had not been able to resist
saying.

But then his father had come to the station to see him off-- first time
in four years -- and he'd to get out of bed to do it, because he was on
nights, and he was wearing his Sunday suit, and he'd shaved, and he was
sober. Jesus Christ, Prior had thought, all we need is the wreath.

A small hard pellet of dismay lodged in his throat. Premonition? No-o, nothing 
so portentous. A slight sense of pushing his luck, perhaps.
This was the fourth time, and four was one too many.


477
THE GHOST ROAD


'I expect they'll invite you over.'

Sarah smiled. 'I think I'll wait till you get back.'

He glanced covertly at his watch. Where was the bloody train? And
then he saw it, in the distance, crawling doubtfully along, trailing its
plume of steam. No sound yet, though as he stepped closer to the edge
of the platform he felt or sensed a vibration in the rails. He turned to
face Sarah, blocking her view of the train.

She was looking up at the rafters. 'Have you seen them?'

He followed her gaze and saw that every rafter was lined with
pigeons. 'The warmth, I suppose,' he said vaguely.

The roar of the approaching train startled the birds. They rose as
one, streaming out from under the glass roof in a great napping and
beating of wings, wheeling, banking, swooping, turning, a black wave
against the smoke-filled sky. Prior and Sarah watched, openmouthed,
drunk on the sight of so much freedom, their linked hands slackening,
able, finally, to think of nothing, as the train steamed in.


SIX


After tea he took Kath's photograph album up to her room. He usually
brought snapshots of family and friends with him on these visits,
because he knew how much pleasure they gave her. She was sitting up
in bed, faded brown hair tied back by a blue ribbon, a pink bed jacket
draped around her shoulders. Blue and pink: the colours of the nursery.
He took the tray off her lap and gave her the album and the
photographs.

She seized on a group of staff at the Empire Hospital. 'You've got
your usual I-don't-want-to-be-photographed expression,' she said,
holding it up to the light.

'Well, I didn't.'

She was already busy pasting glue on to the back. 'Is it true the
natives think the camera steals their souls?'

'Some of them. The sensible ones.'

She pressed her handkerchief carefully around the edges of the photograph,
catching the seepage of glue. 'It's a good one of Dr Head.'

'Oh, Henry isn't worried, he hasn't got a soul.'


478
THE GHOST ROAD 'Will.'

He looked at the tray. 'You haven't eaten much.'

'I'm glad Ethel's having a break. It's been a shocking year.'

Ramsgate had been bombed heavily, a great many civilians, mainly
women and children, killed. As a result Kath's health, which had long
given cause for concern, had dramatically deteriorated. Ethel, who'd
looked after their father in his old age, and then after this invalid
younger sister, had begun to show signs of strain herself, and the
brothers had decided something must be done. A holiday was out of
the question, ruled out by Ethel herself- she could not and would not
go -- but she had agreed to stay with friends for a long weekend.

'I think that's the car now,' Rivers said. 'I'd better get the suitcase
down.'

He found Ethel in the hall, pinning on her hat.

'Now,' she said, unable to let go, 'you've got the telephone
number?'

'Yes.'

'You're sure you've got it?'

'Yes.' He pushed her gently towards the door.

'No, listen, Will. If you're worried, don't hesitate, call the doctor.'

'Ethel, I am a doctor.'

'No, I mean a proper doctor.'

He was still smiling as he went back upstairs.

'Is she gone?'

'Yes, I had to push her out of the door, but she's gone. Have you
finished sticking them in?'

He took the album from her and began turning the pages, pausing
at a photograph of himself and the other members of the Torres
Straits expedition. Barefoot, bare-armed, bearded, sun-tanned, wearing
a collection of spectacularly villainous hats, they looked for all
the world like a low-budget production of The Pirates of Penzance. The flower 
of British anthropology, he thought, God help us. He
turned a few more pages, stopping at a snapshot from his days in
Heidelberg. What on earth made him think those side whiskers were
a good idea?

'I knew you'd stop there,' Katharine said. 'It's her, isn't it? The stout
one.'

'Alma? Of course it isn't.' His sisters had teased him mercilessly at
the time, because he'd happened to be standing next to Alma in a
snapshot. 'Anyway, she wasn't stout, she was . . . comfortable.'


479
THE GHOST ROAD


'She was stout. We really did think you were going to marry her,
you know. She was the only woman we ever saw you with.'

'That's not true either. Remember all the young ladies mother used
to invite to tea?'

'I remember you sloping off upstairs to get away from them. You
were just like Mr Dodgson. He used to do that.'

Kath sometimes combined with childlike innocence a child's sharpness
of perception.

'Like Dodgson? God forbid.'

'You didn't like him, did you?'

He hesitated. 'No.'

'You were jealous. You and Charles.'

'Yes, I think we were. Ah, this is the girl I'm looking for,' he said,
holding up a photograph of a little girl in a white dress. Even in faded
sepia it was possible to tell what an exceptionally beautiful child she'd
been.


Light from the standard lamp fell on the side of Dodgson's face as he
opened the book.

'S-shouldn't we wait f-for K-K-K-Kath?' he asked, the name clotting
on his tongue.

Sitting on the sofa beside Charles, Will thought, That's because it's
the same sound as hard c. C was Dodgson's worst consonant. F and m were his.

'No, I think we should start,' his father said. 'It's not fair to keep
everybody waiting, just because Kath's late.'

'She'll be here soon,' Mother said. 'Her stomach's a good clock.'

'Aren't you w-w-w-w-w-woorr . . .?'

'Not really. She knows she mustn't leave the grounds.'

Will intercepted a glance between his parents. Mother shouldn't
have completed Mr Dodgson's sentence for him like that. You were
supposed to let people flounder, no matter how long it took.

Mr Dodgson stammered less when he read. And why was that?
Because he knew the words so well he didn't have to think about them?
Or because, although his voice was loud, he was really just reading to
Ethel, who sat curled up in the crook of his arm, where she could see the
pictures? He never stammered much when he was talking to the girls. Or
was it because these were his words, and he was determined to get them
out, no matter what? It certainly wasn't because he was thinking about
the movements of his tongue, which was what father said you should do.


480
THK GHOST R O A U


'The rabbit hole,' Mr Dodgson read, or rather recited, for he was
not looking at the page but at the top of Ethel's head, 'went straight on
like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly
that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself
before she found herself falling down a very deep --'

Kath burst in, hot, dirty, dishevelled, trailing her hat by its long blue
ribbon, raspberry stains round her mouth, grubby hands streaked with
cuckoo spit. She went straight to Mr Dodgson and gave him a bunch
of flowers whose stalks had wilted in the heat and flopped over the
back of her hand.

He took them from her and sat looking stupid, not knowing where
to put them, when his attention was caught. 'Look,' he said, 'you've
g-g-got a 1-1-1-ladybird in your h-hair.'

Kath stood, breathing through her mouth with concentration, as he
teased the strands of hair apart and persuaded the insect on to the tip of
his finger. He showed it to her, then carefully stood up, meaning to
carry it to the window, but the scarlet shards parted, the black wings
spread, and the insect sailed out, a dark speck on the blue air.

Dodgson sat down, drew Katharine on to his lap, folded his other
arm round Ethel again, and picked up the book.

'-- well,' he said, and everybody laughed.


'Do you remember how he hated snakes?' Kath said, leaning back
against the pillows with the sunlight on her greying hair.

'Yes, I remember.'

He was thinking that the whole course of Kath's life had been
constriction into a smaller and smaller space. As children they'd both
had a hundred acres of safe woods and fields to roam in, but from that
point on his life had expanded: medical school, round the world as a
ship's doctor, Germany, the Torres Straits, India, Australia, the Solomon
Islands, the New Hebrides. And over the same period the little
girl who'd rambled all day through woods and fields had become the
younger of the two Miss Rivers, scrutinized by her father's parishioners,
the slightest breach of decorum noted, and then, after father's
retirement, a small house in Ramsgate, deteriorating health, confinement
to the house, then to the bedroom, then to the bed. And yet she
was no more intrinsically neurasthenic than he was himself. But a good
mind must have something to feed on, and hers, deprived of other
nourishment, had fed on itself.

He said slowly, 'I think what I remember most is endless croquet.'


481

THE GHOST R O A D


Oh God, he remembered, hours and hours of it, a vast red sun hanging
above the trees, Dodgson's body forming a hoop round Kath's, his
hands enclosing hers, the click of mallets on balls, and mother's voice
drifting across the lawn asking how much longer were they going to
be? It was time for Kath to come in. 'Mathematical croquet,' Rivers
said. 'Nobody could win.'

'I used to win.'

'He helped you cheat.'

'Yes.' A faint smile. 'I know he did.'

Once, on the river, Dodgson had tried to pin up Kath's skirts so she
could paddle. He'd done it often enough before, indeed he carried
safety-pins in his lapels specifically for the purpose, but this time she'd
pushed him away. Some intensity in his gaze? Some quality in his
touch? Their mother had spoken sharply to her, but Dodgson had said,
'No, leave her alone.'

'It's a pity we lost his letters,' Rivers said.

'Oh, and the drawings. There was a whole crate of things went
missing. I'm sure that painting of Uncle Will went at the same time '

'I don't remember that.'

'Yes, you do.'

'Where was it?'

'At the top of the stairs. You couldn't put it in the drawing-room, it
was too horrible.'

'What was it of?'

'Uncle William having his leg cut off. And there was somebody
waiting with a sort of cauldron full of hot tar ready to pour it over the
stump.'

'Are you sure?'

'You didn't like it. When we all went downstairs in the morning I used to see 
you not looking at it. You were like this.' She turned her
head to one side.

'Well, you have surprised me.'

A modestly triumphant smile. 'I remember more than you do.'

Though, even as she spoke, he had a faint, very faint, recollection of
Father lifting him up to look at something. A curious exposed feeling
at the nape of his neck. 'Father tried very hard with Charles and me.
Didn't he?'

'You more than Charles.'

'Ah, well, yes, I was the guinea-pig, wasn't I? The first child always
is.' A greater bitterness in his voice than he knew how to account for.


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I
THE G H O S The ROAD


He brushed it aside. Till make us some cocoa, shall I? And then I think
you should try and get some sleep.'


--      Do you remember how he hated snakes?

--      Yes, I remember.

That's the trouble, Rivers thought, taking off his shirt in the spare
bedroom that had once been his father's study, I remember her childhood
better than my own. Though another person's life, observed
from outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life
lacks.

It was odd he couldn't remember that picture, when Kath, ten years
younger, remembered it so clearly. He'd certainly have been shown it,
many many times. He was named after William Rivers of the Victory, who, as a 
young midshipman, had shot the man who shot Lord Nelson.
That was the family legend anyway. And the great man, dying, had
not indulged in any effete nonsense about kissing Hardy, nor had he
entrusted Lady Hamilton to the conscience of a grateful nation. No, his
last words had been, 'Look after young Will Rivers for me.' And
young Will Rivers had needed looking after. He'd been wounded in
the mouth and leg, and the leg had had to be amputated. Without an
anaesthetic, since there were no anaesthetics, except rum. And then hot
tar to cauterize the spurting stump. My God, it was a wonder any of
them survived. And throughout the ordeal -- family legend again -- he
had not once cried out. He'd survived, married, had children, become
Warden of Greenwich Hospital. There was a portrait bust of him
there, in the Painted Hall.

Now that he did remember being taken to see. Was that the occasion
on which his father had lifted him up to look? No, he'd have been
eight or nine.

And then he remembered. Quite casually, a bubble breaking on the
surface. He'd had his hair cut, he'd just been breeched, yes, that was it,
his neck felt funny, and so did his legs. And he was crying. Yes, it was
all coming back. He'd embarrassed his father in the barber's shop by
howling his head off. Bits of him were being cut off, bits of him were
dropping on to the floor. His father shushed him, and when that didn't
work, slapped his leg. He gasped with shock, filled his lungs with air,
and howled louder. So being shown the picture was a lesson? You
don't behave like that, you behave like this. 'He didn't cry,' his father
had said, holding him up. 'He didn't make a sound.'

And I've been stammering ever since, Rivers thought, inclined to


483
1 HE GHOST ROAD

v!^

see the funny side. Though what had it meant -- Trafalgar, the Napoleonic
wars -- to a four-year-old for whom a summer's day was endless?
Nothing, it could have meant nothing. Or, worse, it had meant something
fearfully simple. The same name, the slapped leg, being told not
to cry. Had he perhaps looked at the picture and concluded that this
was what happened to you if your name was William Rivers?

He'd avoided looking at it, Kath said, even turning his head away so
that he could not glimpse it by mistake as he went past. Had he also
deliberately suppressed the visual image of it, making it impossible for
himself to see it in his mind's eye? Prior, told that Rivers attributed his
almost total lack of visual memory to an event in his childhood that he
had succeeded in forgetting, had said brutally, 'You were raped or
beaten . . . Whatever it was, you put your mind's eye out rather than
have to go on seeing it. Is that what happened, or isn't it?' Yes, Rivers
had been obliged to admit, though he'd argued very strongly for a less
dramatic interpretation of events. It could have been something quite
trivial, he'd said, though terrifying to a child. Something as simple as
the fearsome shadow of a dressing-gown on the back of the nursery
door. Small children are not like adults, he'd insisted. What terrifies
them may seem trivial to us.

Was this the suppressed memory? He didn't know. Was it trivial?
Well, yes, in a way, compared with Prior's lurid imaginings. A smack
on the leg, a lesson in manliness from an over-conscientious but loving
father. It's a long way from sadistic beatings or sexual assault. And yet
it wasn't as trivial as it seemed at first. That silence - for him now that
was the centre of the picture -- not the blood, not the knife, but that
resolutely clenched mouth. Every day of his working life he looked at
twitching mouths that had once been clenched. Go on, he said, though
rarely in so many words, cry. It's all right to grieve. Breakdown's
nothing to be ashamed of-- the pressures were intolerable. But, also,
stop crying. Get up on your feet. Walk. He both distrusted that silence
and endorsed it, as he was bound to do, he thought, being his father's
son.


He went to Greenwich by train, visited the portrait bust in the Painted
Hall, then continued his journey by steamer, arriving at Westminster
steps in the late afternoon. The underground was crowded, he couldn't
find a taxi, and by the time he turned the corner of Holford Road
Prior was already there, standing on the steps. 'Have you knocked?'
Rivers asked.


484
THE GHOST ROAD


'No, I saw you coining. Been at the hospital?'

'No, I've just got back from Ramsgate.' He fitted his key into the
lock. 'Now if we tiptoe across the hall

Prior smiled, having encountered Rivers's landlady many times in
the past.

'All clear,' Rivers said.

They walked upstairs side by side, Rivers noticing how easily Prior
was breathing. Sometimes, during the past summer, he'd listened to
Prior's step on these stairs and counted the pauses. He'd never gone out
on to the top landing to greet Prior as he did with all his other patients
because he knew how intolerable he would find it to be seen fighting
for breath. But now his chest was remarkably clear, a reflection perhaps
of the satisfaction he felt at going back to France. Rivers opened the
door of his rooms, and stood aside to let Prior enter.

Somehow or other he had to prevent this meeting becoming a
confrontation, as consultations with Prior still tended to do. Prior
would enjoy the skirmish at the time - there was nothing he liked
better -- but he'd regret it later. 'Well, sit yourself down,' Rivers said,
taking Prior's coat and pointing to a chair by the fire. 'How are you?'

'Quite well. Chest works. Tongue works.'

'Nightmares?'

'Hmm ... a few. I had one where the faces on the revolver targets -- you know, 
horrible snarling baby-eating boche -- turned into the faces
of people I love. But only after I'd pulled the trigger, so there was
nothing I could do about it. 'Fraid I killed you every time.'

'Ah, so it isn't a bad nightmare, then?'

They smiled at each other. Rivers thought Prior was entirely
unaware of what he'd said, though that was always a dangerous assumption
to make about Prior. Perhaps because he'd recently been thinking
about his own father Rivers was more than usually aware of the strong
father--son element in his relationship with Prior. He had no son; Prior
utterly rejected his natural father. 'Oh, by the way, congratulations on
your engagement.'

Hmm, Prior thought. Charles Manning's congratulations had also
been brief, though in his case the brevity might be excused, since he'd
had to take Prior's cock out of his mouth to be able to say anything at
all. 'Thank you.'

'Have you fixed a date?'

'Next August. We met in August, we got engaged in August,
so . . .'


485

THE GHOST ROAD


'And when do you leave for France?'

'Tonight. I'm glad to be going.'

'Yes.'

Prior smiled. 'Do you think I'm ready to go back?'

A slight hesitation. 'I think I'd be happier if you did another
twelve weeks' home service. Which would still,' he persisted across
Prior's interruptions, 'get you back to France by the end of
November.'

'Why?'

'You know why. Two months ago you were having memory lapses.
Rather bad ones actually. Anyway this is purely hypothetical. Wasn't
my decision --'

Prior leant forward. 'I was afraid you'd write.'

'It never occurred to me anybody would think of sending you
back.'

'I think the MO was against it. Well, that was my impression
anyway. How would I know? As for the Board, well, they wanted to
send me back. I wanted to go.'

'What did they ask you about? Nerves?'

'No, not mentioned. They don't believe in shell-shock. You'd be
surprised how many army Medical Boards don't.'

Rivers snorted. 'Oh, I don't think I would. Anyway, you're going
back. You've got what you wanted.'

'At the moment I can't wait to see the back of England.'

'Any particular reason?'

'It's nothing really. I just had my fur rubbed up the wrong way.' He
hesitated. 'Manning took me to meet Robert Ross. I don't know
whether you've met him? Through Sassoon?'

'Briefly.'

'I liked him, he was charming -- I wasn't equally keen on some of his
friends.'

Rivers waited.

'One in particular. Apparently he'd been stood up by his boyfriend
-- he'd been expecting an amorous weekend -- and the poor chap had
decided it wasn't worth the train fare from Leeds. And this man -- Birtwhistle, 
his name is -- was saying, "Of course one can't rely on
them. Their values are totally different from ours. They're a different
species, really. The WCs." Smirk, smirk.'

Rivers looked puzzled.

'Working classes. Water-closets. The men who've getting their bal


486

I
THE GHOST ROAD


locks shot off so he can go on being the lily on the dung heap. God,
they make me sick.'

'I'm sure you more than held your own.'

'No, I didn't, that's what bothers me. It all got tangled up with
being a guest and being polite. To Ross, of course, not him. Anyway I
decided to give this prat a run for his money so we adjourned upstairs
afterwards.'

'You and Manning?'

'No, me and Birtwhistle. Birtwhistle and I.'

'It doesn't sound much like a punishment.'

'Oh, it was. Nothing like sexual humiliation, Rivers. Nobody ever
forgets that.'

Rivers looked into the trustless eyes, and thought, My God, I wouldn't
want to cross you. Though he had crossed him many times, in the course
of therapy, and refused more than one invitation to 'adjourn upstairs'.

'I just wish your last evening had been pleasanter.'

Prior shrugged. 'It was all right. It just ... he happens to represent
everything in England that isn't worth fighting for. Which made him a
rather bracing companion.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'd better be
going. I'm catching the midnight train.'

Rivers hesitated. 'Please don't think because I personally would have
recommended another three months in England that I don't have
every confidence in your ability to . . . to . . .'

'Do my duty to King and country.'

'Yes.'

'Rivers, you don't think I should be going back at all.'

Rivers hesitated. 'The Board at Craiglockhart recommended permanent
home service and that wasn't because of your nerves, it was on the
basis of your asthma alone. I haven't seen anything to make me change
my mind.'

Prior looked at him, smiled, and slapped him on both arms. 'I've got
to go.'

Rivers said slowly, as he went to get Prior's coat, 'Do you remember
saying something to me once about the the the ones who go back
b-being the real test cases? From the point of view of finding out
whether a particular therapy works?'

'Yes, I remember.' Another smile. 'I was getting at you.'

'You always were. Well, it just occurs to me you're actually rather
better equipped than most people to observe that process. I think you
have great powers of detachment.'


487
I

THE GHOST ROAD


' "Cold-blooded little bastard," ' Prior translated, then thought for a
moment. 'You're giving me a football to kick across, aren't you? You
remember that story? The Suffolk's kicking a football across No Man's
Land when the whistles blew on the Somme? Bloody mad.'

'No, the battle was mad. The football was sane. Whoever ordered
them to do that was a very good psychologist.'

'Ah!'

'But I know what you mean. It's become the kind of incident one
can't take seriously any more. Only I'm not sure that's right, you see. I
suppose what one should be asking is whether an ideal becomes invalid
because the people who hold it are betrayed.'

'If holding it makes them into naive idiots, yes.'      If

'Were they?'

'If they were, I can't talk. I'm going back.'

Rivers smiled. 'So you don't want my football?'

'On the contrary, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'll send you the half
time score.'

Rivers handed him his greatcoat, examining it first. 'I'm impressed.'

'So you should be at the price.' Prior started to put it on. 'Do you
know you can get these with scarlet silk linings?'

'Army greatcoats?'

'Yes. Saw one in the Cafe Royal. On the back of one of my old
intelligence colleagues. Quite a startling effect when he crossed his legs, 
subtle, you know, like a baboon's bottom. Apparently he's supposed to
sit there and "attract the attention of anti-war elements".'

'Was he?'

'He was attracting attention. I don't know what their views on the
war were. Another thing that made me glad to be getting out of it.'
He held out his hand. 'Don't come down.'

Rivers took him at his word, but went through to the bedroom
window and looked out, lifting the curtain an inch to one side. Miss
Irving's voice, a laughing farewell, and then Prior appeared, foreshortened,
running down the steps.

On Vao there was a custom that when a bastard was born some
leading man on the island adopted the child and brought him up as his
own. The boy called him father, and grew up surrounded by love and
care and then, when he reached puberty, he was given the honour, as
befitted the son of a great man, of leading in the sacrificial pig, one of
the huge-tusked boars in which the wealth of the people was measured.
He was given new bracelets, new necklaces, a new penis wrapper and
TTIT GHOST ROAD


then, in front of the entire community, all of whom knew what was
about to happen, he led the pig to the sacrificial stone, where his father
waited with upraised club. And, as the boy drew near, he brought the
club down and crushed his son's skull.

In one of his father's churches, St Faith's, at Maidstone, the window
to the left of the altar shows Abraham with the knife raised to slay his
son, and, below the human figures, a ram caught in the thicket by his
horns. The two events represented the difference between savagery
and civilization, for in the second scenario the voice of God is about to
forbid the sacrifice, and will be heeded. He had knelt at that altar rail
for years, Sunday after Sunday, receiving the chalice from his father's
hands.

Perhaps, Rivers thought, watching Prior's head bob along behind
the hedge and disappear from view, it was because he'd been thinking
so much about fathers and sons recently that the memory of the two
sacrifices had returned, but he wished this particular memory had
chosen another moment to surface.


489
Part Two
SEVEN


29 August 1918


Bought this in a stationer's just off Fleet Street quite a long time ago.
I've been carrying it round v/ith me ever since unused, mainly because
it's so grand. I bought it for the marbled covers and the thick creamy
pages and ever since then the thick creamy pages have been saying, Piss
off, what could you possibly write on us that would be worth reading?
It's a marvellous shop, a real old-fashioned stationer's. Stationers',
second-hand bookshops, ironmongers'. Feel a great need at the moment
to concentrate on small pleasures. If the whole of one's life can be
summoned up and held in the palm of one hand, in the living moment, then time 
means nothing. World without end, Amen.

Load of crap. Facts are what we need, man. Facts.

Arrived in London to find no porters, no taxis, and the hotels full.
Charles Manning on the platform (the train was so late I was sure
he'd've gone home), offering, as a solution, the room he rents in Half
Moon Street, 'for the nights when he works late at the office and
doesn't want to disturb the household'. Oh, c'mon, Charles, I wanted
to say. It's me, remember? I was all for trudging round a few more
hotels, but he was limping badly and obviously in pain and pissed off
with me for going back when I could have been comfortably established
in the Min of Mu chasing bits of paper across a desk, like him.
(He'd go back to France tomorrow if they'd have him.)

When we got to Half Moon Street we went straight upstairs and he
produced a bottle of whisky. Not bad (but not what he drinks himself
either) and I waited for him to do what everybody else would do in
the circumstances and collect the rent. He didn't, of course. I'm plagued
with honourable people. I thought, Oh, for Christ's sake, if you haven't
got the gumption to ask for it bloody do without. I was feeling tired
and sticky and wanted a bath. After ten minutes of swishing soapy
water round my groin and whisky round my guts I started to feel
better. I had a quiet consultation with myself in the bathroom mirror,
all steamy and pink and conspiratorial, and went back in and said,


493
THE GHOST ROAD


Right let's be having you. Over the end of the bed. He likes being
dominated, as people often do who've never had to raise their voice in
their lives to get other people running after them.

Then we went out to dinner, came back, Charles stayed a while,
long enough to introduce me to Ross -- extraordinary man, rather
Chinese-looking, and not just physically, a sense of a very old civilization.
I shook his hand and I thought I'm shaking the hand that . . .
Well, there is the connection with Wilde. And I felt at home in this
rather beleaguered little community. Beleaguered, because Ross thinks
he's going to be arrested, he thinks the utterly disgusting Pemberton
Billing affair has given them carte blanche to go ahead and do it. He
may be exaggerating the risk, he looks ill, he looks as if he goes to bed
and broods, but one or two people there, including Manning, don't
seem to rule out an arrest. A comfortable atmosphere in spite of it.
Soldiers who aren't militarists, pacifists who aren't prigs, and talking to
each other. Now there's a miracle.

But then -- Birtwhistle. He's a don at Cambridge, very clever, apparently.
Curiously, he actually prides himself on having a broader grasp
of British society than the average person, i.e. he pokes working-class
boys' bottoms. Might even be true, I suppose, though the heterosexual
equivalent doesn't pride itself on broadening its social experience whenever
it nips off for a knee-wobbler in Bethnal Green. Ah, but these are 
relationships, Birtwhistle would say. Did say. Lurve, no less. And yet he
spoke of his working-class lover - his WE - in tones of utter contempt.
And he didn't succeed in placing me, or not accurately enough. So
much for the broader grasp. I played a rather cruel convoluted game
with him afterwards. Which satisfied me a great deal at the time, but
now I feel contaminated, as I wouldn't have done if I'd kicked him in
the balls (which would also have been kinder).

Manning -- after we'd had sex -- became very strange. Great distances
opened up. Partly because he hadn't intended it to happen - or didn't
think he had - and partly just because I'm going back and he isn't.
Two inches of sheet between us -- miles miles. I was glad when he went
and I'm even more glad he's not here now. Very few pleasures in sex
are any match for a narrow bed and cool, clean sheets. (A postcoital
reflection if ever I heard one.)


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THE GHOST ROAD


30 August


Collected my coat today. I'm not even going to write down how
much it cost, but it's warm and light and it looks good, and I need all
of that.

Mooched round the rest of the day doing nothing very much.
Dinner at Half Moon Street in my room. Saw Rivers afterwards. Had
made up my mind not to ask what he thought about my going back -- and 
specifically not to ask if he thought I was fit -- then asked anyway
and was predictably irritated by the answer.

I had a very clear perception while we were talking -- I suppose
because I've been away for a while -- that his power over people, the
power to heal if you like, springs directly from some sort of wound or
deformity in him. He has a lot of strengths, but he isn't working from
strength. Difficult to say this without sounding patronizing, which
isn't how I feel. In fact for me it's the best thing about him - well the
only thing that makes him tolerable, actually -- that he doesn't sit
behind the desk implicitly setting himself up as some sort of standard
of mental health. He once said to me half the world's work's done by
hopeless neurotics, and I think he had himself in mind. And me.

Got to the station with an hour to spare and Manning showed up. I
wished he hadn't but there he was and of course we had one of these
awful station conversations. The ripples between those going out and
those staying behind are so bloody awful the whole thing's best
avoided. However, we got through it, looked at each other through
the window with mutual relief and then away we went. Or I went.

Arrived here (Folkestone) in the middle of the night, exhausted.
There's something about railway stations, and I've been in a lot of
them recently. The goodbyes all get trapped under the roof and suck
the oxygen out of the air. No other reason for me to feel like this.


Saturday, 31 August


Woke tired. But got up anyway, not wasting time - 'wasting time',
'killing time' start to be phrases you notice -- lying in bed, and sat on
the balcony for a while watching the sun come up and decided to do
what people always think about doing, and then think again and go
back to sleep: I decided to swim before breakfast. So down to the
beach. Hovered on the shingle by the waterline, told myself not to be


495
THL GHOST ROAD


so feeble, etc., and plunged in. Water pearly grey, absolutely bloody
freezing, but, after the first shock, total exhilaration. I stood for a while
afterwards up to my knees, feeling the surge and suck round my legs,
neither in the sea nor on the land. Marvellous. Still the slanting light of
early morning. Worm casts on the beach very prominent, the sun
casting vast shadows from little things, and I thought of the beach outside
Edinburgh where I made love to Sarah for the first time. Went
straight back and wrote to her. Then walked through town, giving
myself small treats, chocolates, etc. and avoiding other officers.

Saw Hallet with his family, looking quite desperate. All of them,
but I meant Hallet. Poor little bugger's had a station goodbye that's
lasted for days. I waved and passed on.


On board


People playing cards below deck, but there's quite a heave on the sea,
and I'd rather be out here watching it. Great bands of pale green in the
wake, laced with thick foam, and terns hovering, riding rather -- only
the most fractional adjustment of their wings needed to keep them
motionless. And they come quite close.

Watched the cliffs disappear. Tried to think of something worthy of
the occasion and came up with: The further out from England the nearer is
to France, and then couldn't get rid of the bloody thing, it just ran
round and round my head.

Hallet came up and stood a few yards away, not wanting to intrude
on what he took to be a fond farewell to the motherland. In the end I
gave in, we sat down and talked. Full of idealism. I'd rather have had
the Walrus and the Carpenter.

It's very obvious that Hallet's adopted me. Like one of those little
pilot fish or the terns for that matter. He thinks because I've been out
three times before I know what's going on. Seems a bright enough lad.
I wonder how long it'll take him to work out that nobody knows
what's going on?


Sunday, i September


Etaples marginally less brutal than I remember it, though still a squad
of men passed me running the gauntlet of the canaries, who yelled


496
THE GHOST ROAD


abuse in their faces much as they always did. And you think, All right
it has to be brutal -- think what they're being toughened up for -- but
actually that misses the point. It's the impersonality that forms the biggest
part of the sheer fucking nastiness of this place. Nobody knows anybody.
You marshal men around -- they don't know you, don't trust
you (why should they?) and you don't invest anything in them.

Same feeling, in a milder form, between the officers. We sleep in
dormitories, and it's the same feeling you get on big wards in hospitals
-- privacy sacrificed without intimacy being gained.

Hallet's in the next bed. He sat on his bed this evening and showed
me a photograph of his girl - fiancee, I should say. His parents think 1.       
he's too young to marry, which he fiercely objects to, pointing out

.§, .   that he's old enough for this. Of course I don't think he's old enough

for this either, but I don't say so. Instead I told him I'd got engaged too and 
showed him a photograph of Sarah. And then we sat smiling at
each other inanely, feeling like complete idiots. Well, I did.


Wednesday, 4 September


Time passes quickly here. Enough to do during the day, and a fair
amount of free time. But the atmosphere's awful. The mess has scuffed
no-colour lino -- the colour of misery, if misery has a colour -- and a
big round table in the middle, covered with dog-eared copies of Punch
And John Bull, exactly like a dentist's waiting-room. The same pervasive
fear. The same reluctance to waste time on people you're probably
never going to see again anyway.

I get out as often as I can. Walked miles today, great windswept sandy
foothills, and a long line of stunted pines all leaning away from the sea.


Saturday, 7 September


Posted to the 2nd Manchesters. We leave tomorrow.

It's evening now, and everybody's scribbling away, telling people
the news, or as much of the news as we're allowed to tell them. I look
up and down the dormitory and there's hardly a sound except for
pages being turned, and here and there a pen scratching. It's like this
every evening. And not just letters either. Diaries. Poems. At least two
would-be poets in this hut alone.


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THE GHOST ROAD


Why? you have to ask yourself. I think it's a way of claiming
immunity. First-person narrators can't die, so as long as we keep telling
the story of our own lives we're safe. Ha bloody fucking Ha.


EIGHT


Rivers turned to watch the sun swelling and reddening as it sank, a     9
brutal, bloody disc, scored by steeples and factory chimneys, obscured
by a haze of drifting brown and yellow smoke.

He'd come out to walk on Hampstead Heath because he was feeling
ill, and needed to clear his head before settling down to an evening's
work, but it wasn't helping. With every step he felt worse, muscles
aching, throat sore, eyes stinging, skin clammy. By the time he got
back to his lodgings, he'd decided to miss dinner and go straight to
bed. He knocked on the door of Mrs Irving's private apartments, told
her he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in to dinner, and glimpsed
through the open door the portrait of her dead son that hung above
the mantelpiece, with flowers beneath it and candlesticks on either side.

Going slowly upstairs, pausing frequently to lean on the banister,
Rivers thought about what he'd just seen: the portrait, the flowers. A
shrine. Not fundamentally different from the skull houses of Pa Na
Gundu where he'd gone with Njiru. The same human impulse at
work. Difficult to know what to make of these flashes of cross-cultural
recognition. From a strictly professional point of view, they were
almost meaningless, but then one didn't have such experiences as a
disembodied anthropological intelligence, but as a man, and as a man
one had to make some kind of sense of them.

Once in bed he started to shiver. The sheets felt cold against his hot
legs. He slept and dreamt of the croquet lawn at Knowles Bank, his
mother in a long white dress coming out to call the children in, the sun
setting over the wood casting very long, fine shadows across the lawn.
The shadows of the hoops were particularly long and fearful. He'd
been awake for several minutes before he realized he was trying to
remember the rules of. mathematical croquet, as devised by Dodgson,
and actually feeling distressed because he couldn't remember them.
Then he realized that although he was now fully awake he could still


498
THE GHOST ROAD


see the lawn, which meant his temperature was very high. Always, in a
high fever, his visual memory returned, giving him a secret, obscurely
shameful pleasure in being ill. He wouldn't sleep again -- he was far too
hot -- so he simply lay and let his newly opened mind's eye roam.

On the Southern Cross, on the voyage to Eddystone, he'd stood on
deck, watching the pale green wake furrow the dark sea, reluctant to
exchange the slight breeze for the stuffy heat below deck.

At one of the stops a group of natives got on, the men wearing castoff
European suits, the women floral-print dresses. A few of the women
had naked breasts, but most were obviously missionized. A pathetic
little remnant they looked, squatting there, part of the small army of
uprooted natives who drifted from one island to the next, one mission
station to the next, and belonged nowhere. At first sight all mission
stations seemed to be surrounded by converts, and the uninitiated
always assumed these were converts from that island. Only later did
one become aware of this uprooted population, travelling from one
station to the next, most of them from islands where the impact of
western culture had been particularly devastating.

He squatted down beside them, and, as he expected, found enough
knowledge of pidgin to make conversation possible. He'd devised a
questionnaire that he used on occasions when it was necessary to extract
the maximum amount of information quickly. The first question was
always: Suppose you were lucky enough to find a guinea, with whom
would you share it? This produced a list of names, names which he
would then ask them to translate into kinship terms. And from there
one could move to virtually any aspect of their society.

When he sensed they were getting tired he paid them their tobacco
sticks and stood up to go, but then one of the women caught his arm
and pulled him down again. Poking him playfully in the chest, she
retrieved two words of English from her small store: 'Your turn.'

The questions were posed again and in the same order. When he
told them that, since he was unmarried and had no children, he would
not necessarily feel obliged to share his guinea with anybody, they at
first refused to believe him. Had he no parents living? Yes, a father.
Brothers and sisters? One brother, two sisters. Same mother, same
father? Yes. But he would not automatically share the guinea with
them, though he might choose to do so.

The woman who'd pulled his arm looked amused at first, then,
when she was sure she'd understood, horrified. And so it went on.
Because the questions were very carefully chosen, they gradually


499
THE GHOST ROAD


formed an impression -- and not a vague impression either, in some
respects quite precise -- of the life of a bachelor don in a Cambridge
college. Hilarity was the main response. And if the questions had led
on to more intimate territory? If he'd been able, or willing, to lay
before them the whole constricting business of trying to fit into society,
of living under and around and outside the law, what would have been
their reaction then? Laughter. They'd have gone on laughing. They
would not have known how to pity him. He looked up, at the blue,
empty sky, and realized that their view of his society was neither more
nor less valid than his of theirs. No bearded elderly white man looked
down on them, endorsing one set of values and condemning the other.
And with that realization, the whole frame of social and moral rules
that keeps individuals imprisoned -- and sane -- collapsed, and for a
moment he was in the same position as these drifting, dispossessed
people. A condition of absolute free-fall.

Then, next day, after a restless night, he and Hocart transferred to a
tramp steamer for the last stage of the journey, and there he met the
logical end product of the process of free-fall -- the splat on the pavement,
as it were -- Brennan.


Smells of engine oil and copra, of sweaty human beings sleeping too
close together in the little covered cabin on deck. Above their heads,
offering no clear reference point to northern eyes, foreign constellations
wheeled and turned.

Brennan slept opposite, his profile, under a fringe of greying curls,
like that of a Roman emperor's favourite run to seed. He snored,
gargled, stopped breathing, gargled again, muttered a protest as if he
thought somebody else had woken him, returned to sleep. On the
other side of the cabin was Father Michael, trailing behind him the
atmosphere of the theological college he'd not long left behind -- cups
of cocoa and late-night discussions on chastity in other people's bedrooms.
Then Hocart, looking much younger than twenty-five, his
upper lip pouting on every breath.

Rivers supposed he must have slept eventually, though it seemed no
time at all before they were stretching and stumbling out on deck.

The deckhands, emerging from their airless hellhole next to the
engine, swabbed passengers down along with the deck. They finished
off with a bucket of cold water thrown full into the face so that one
was left gasping and blinded. Brennan stood, eyes closed, one hand
resting between his plump breasts, a hirsute Aphrodite, water dripping


500
THE GHOST ROAD


from his nose, his foreskin, the hairs on his wrinkled and baggy
scrotum. It was impossible to dislike somebody who brought such
enormous zest to the minute-by-minute business of living.

As the sun rose, beating down on to the steaming deck, they began
the day-long search for patches of shade. Father Michael and Hocart
came close to quarrelling about the record of missionaries in the islands.
Hocart was the product of a Victorian vicarage, and something of a
rebel. Michael obviously thought he'd fallen among atheists, or worse.
Brennan listened to the argument, scratched his neck, then gathered
phlegm in his throat, a rich, bubbling sound -- his zest for life became a
bit much at times -- and spat it on the deck, where he inspected it
carefully, and Rivers, cursing his medical training, found himself inspecting
it too. 'I knew a missionary once,' Brennan said, with a look
of placid, lazy malice. 'Didn't speak a word of the language --just sets
up shop -Jesus saves. And then he starts to get worried 'cause they all
come flocking round but he can't get the buggers to kneel down. So
down on his knees he goes. "What's the word for this?" Well you know and / 
know,' Brennan said, turning to Rivers, 'there's only one
thing they do kneeling down. Come next Sunday, bloody great congregation,
up he stands -- raises his arms.' He looked at Michael and, in an
amazingly pure counter-tenor, sang, 'Let us fuck.'

A bray of laughter from the open door of the engine-room where
the skipper stood, wiping his fingers on an oily rag.

'I wish you'd leave Michael alone,' Rivers said to Hocart after the
others had gone below deck.

'Why? He's an arrogant little --'

'He's a baby.'

But Hocart, a baby himself, saw no need for mercy.

After dark, packed round the rickety table on which they ate their
dinner, there was no escaping each other's company. Elbows jarred,
knees joggled, the leather seats tormented patches of prickly heat.
Much covert and not so covert scratching of backsides went on. The
skipper joined them for the meal, but contributed little to the conversation,
preferring to be amused in silence. His trade had made him a
connoisseur of social discomfort.

Brennan, sensing that Rivers liked him, embarked on what threatened
to become his life story, interspersed with swigs of whisky and
great breathy revelations of dental decay. He showed Rivers a photograph
of his three naked brown babies tumbling over each other in
the dust. Behind them, face, neck and breasts covered in tattoos,


501
THE GHOST ROAD


stood a young girl. 'She must be from Lepers Island,' Rivers said.

Brennan took the photograph back and stared at it. 'Yeh, that's
right. Bitch.'

He seemed about to say more. Rivers said quickly, 'I didn't realize
you'd been in the New Hebrides.'

'Started there.'

He'd started as a 'blackbirder', as so many of the older traders had,
kidnapping natives to work on the Queensland plantations, and he was
frank about his methods too. Make friends with them, invite them on
board ship, get them drunk and Bob's your uncle. By the time they
come round they're out at sea and there's bugger all they can do about
it. Used to give the girls a bit of a run round the deck, mind. We-11
why not, they're all gunna get their arses fucked off when they get to
the plantations anyway. 'Do you know,' he went on, leaning across the
table in search of somebody to shock, and fixing on Michael, though
Hocart's expression might have made him the more obvious choice,
'you can buy a woman - white, mind - for forty quid in Sydney?'

Td've thought forty quid was a bit steep,' Hocart said.

'Buy, man, I'm not talking about fucking rent.'

'So why didn't you?'

'Nah,' Brennan said morosely, swishing whisky round his glass.
'Years on their backs.' He turned to Rivers. 'Half way through the
honeymoon you'd be pissing hedgehogs backwards. He knows what I
mean,' he said, jerking his thumb at Rivers.

'We all know what you mean,' Hocart said.

The skipper leant forward, smiling a positively old-maidish smile.
'How about a nice game of cards?'

And then there was no further talk, only the creaking of the spirit
lamp above their heads, and the plump slap of cards on the table. Rivers,
amused, watched Hocart slowly realize that when confronted by a
dwindling stock of coins, Father Michael cheated and Brennan didn't.

Next morning -- a small triumph for Melanesia -- Father Michael,
who'd hitherto crouched over a bucket to wash, stripped off with the
rest of them, his white arum lily of a body with its improbable stamen
looking almost shocking beside Brennan's.

The conversation that morning meandered on amicably enough, as
they leaned together, sweating, in their patches of shade, until a smudge
of blue-green on the horizon restored them to separateness.

By late afternoon they'd moored by a rotting landing stage on
Eddystone, and clambered ashore to supervise the unloading of their


502
THE GHOST ROAD


stores. Rivers was used to missionizcd islands where canoes paddled
out to meet the incoming steamer, brown faces, white eyes, flashing
smiles, while others gathered at the landing stage, ready to carry bags
up to the mission station for a few sticks of tobacco or even sheer
Christian goodwill. A cheerful picture, as long as you didn't notice the
rows and rows of crosses in the mission graveyard, men and women in
the prime of life dead of the diseases of the English nursery: whooping
cough, measles, diphtheria, chicken pox, scarlet fever -- all were fatal
here. And the mission boat carried them from island to island, station
to station, remorselessly, year after year.

Instead of that - nothing. Nobody appeared. Rivers and Hocart
waved till the steamer dwindled to a point on the glittering water,
then lugged the tent and enough food for the night up to a small
clearing a hundred yards or so above the beach. Spread out below
them was the Bay of Narovo. The village, whose huts they could just
see between the trees, was also called Narovo.

'Aren't we a bit close?' Hocart asked.

'We don't want to be too far away. If we're isolated we'll be frightening.
The wicked witch lives in the wood, remember.'

'What do you suppose they'll do?'

Rivers shrugged. 'They'll be along.'

By the time they'd erected the tent the swift tropical darkness was
falling. After sunset the island breathed for a moment in silence; from
the bush arose the buzz of different insects, the cries of different birds.
Rivers was intensely aware of the fragility of the small lighted area
round the tent. He kept peering into the trees and thought he saw dark
shapes flitting between the trunks, but still nobody appeared.

After a meal of tinned meat and turnipy pineapple, Hocart said he
would lie down. He looked utterly exhausted, and Rivers suspected he
might be running a slight fever. Shrouded in his mosquito net, Hocart
talked for a while, then switched off his torch and turned over to sleep.

Rivers sat at a table immediately outside the tent, trying to mend
the oil-lamp which was smoking badly. A small figure alone in the
clearing, in a storm of pale wings, for every moth in the bush appeared
and fluttered round the light. Now and then one succeeded in finding
a way in, and there was a quick sizzle, a flare, more smoke. Rivers
shook out the charred corpse and started again. An oddly nerve-racking
business, this. Working so close to the light, he was almost blinded and
could see virtually nothing even when he raised his head. He was
aware of the thick darkness of the bush around him, but more as a


503
THE G II (1ST ROAD     *

y

pressure on his mind than through his senses. Once he stopped, thinking
he heard a flute being played in the village. He sniffed the oil on his ft

fingers, wiped his chin on the back of his hand, and sat back for a rest,       
1

his retinas aching as they do after an optician has shone his torch on to       
*

them. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt. When he
put them on again he saw a figure had come out from among the trees,    5

and was standing on the edge of the clearing. A man in early middle     t

age, white lime streaks in his hair, around the eye sockets, and along  I

the cheek and jaw-bones, so that it seemed - until he caught the glint  ?

of eye white - that he was looking at a skull. He sat absolutely still, as      
I

the man came towards him. Alone, or apparently alone. He indicated      I

the other chair, thinking it might be refused, but his visitor sat down,        
i

inclined his head slightly, and smiled.

Rivers pointed to himself and said his name.    >-j

A thin brown hand raised to his shell necklace. 'Njiru.'        i

They stared at each other. Rivers thought he ought to offer food,

but the only food easily available was the remains of the pineapple, and

he was chary of breaking off the encounter by going into the tent to

look for it.

Njiru was deformed. Without the curvature of the spine he would
have been a tall man - by Melanesian standards very tall - and he
carried himself with obvious authority. In addition to the shell necklace
he wore ear-rings, arm rings and bracelets all made of shells, and
somehow it was immediately apparent that these ornaments had great
value. His earlobes, elongated by the constant wearing of heavy shells,
almost brushed his shoulders when he moved. The eyes were remarkable:
hooded, piercing, intelligent, shrewd. Wary.

They went on staring at each other, reluctant to start exploring their
shared resource of pidgin, aware, perhaps, even in these first moments,
of how defective an instrument it would be for what they needed to
say to each other.

Suddenly Njiru pointed to the lamp. 'Baggerup.'
Rivers was so surprised he laughed out loud. 'No, no baggerup. I
mend.'


Njiru was the eldest son of Rembo, the chief who controlled the most
important cults on the island. Because of his deformity, he'd never
been able to compete with other young men, in canoeing, fishing,
building or war. By way of compensation, he'd devoted himself to
thought and learning, and, in particular, to the art of healing. His


504
THE GHOST ROAD


abilities would have made him remarkable in any society. On Eddy
stone, his power rested primarily on the number of spirits he controlled.
The people made no distinction between knowledge and power, either
in their own language or in pidgin. 'Njiru knows Mateana' meant
Njiru had the power to cure the diseases caused by Mateana. Similarly,
Rivers was told within a few days of arriving on the island that Njiru
'knew' Ave. Without in the least understanding the significance of
what he'd been told, he repeated it to Njiru. 'Kundaite he say you
know Ave.'

A snort of derision. 'Kundaite he speak gammon.'

He was by far the best interpreter and -- when he chose -- the most
reliable informant, capable of making rigorous distinctions between
what he knew and what he merely supposed, between evidence and
hypothesis. But he did not generally choose to share information. If
knowledge was power, then Njiru kept a firm grasp on his. Indeed, at
first he would do no more than translate passively what others said. In
particular, he acted as interpreter between Rivers and Rinambesi.

Rinambesi was the oldest man on the island, the liveliest, and, after
Njiru, the most vigorous. He seemed immune to the apathy and
depression that many of the younger islanders seemed to feel, perhaps
because he lived so much in the glories of the past. Like very old
people the world over, he was hazy about yesterday's events, but
vividly remembered the triumphs of his youth. He'd been a great
head-hunter once, ferocious enough to have secured the rare privilege
of a second wife. His memory for the genealogies of the islanders was
phenomenal, and this was chiefly what brought Rivers to him. And
yet, time and time again, the flow of information faltered, though it
was not immediately obvious why.

Sexual intercourse between unmarried young people was very
free, though 'free' was perhaps the wrong word, since every act had
to be preceded by a payment of shells by the young man to the
girl's parents. After marriage complete fidelity was required, and one
expression of this was that one must never utter the name of an ex
lover.

All the women's names in Rinambesi's generation had to be left
blank. Looking at the row of cards in front of him, Rivers turned to
Njiru. 'This fellow make fuck-fuck all women?'

A gleam of amusement. 'Yes.'

Rivers threw the pencil down. Rinambesi, grinning toothlessly, was
making a deeply unsuccessful attempt to look modest. Rivers started


505
THEGHOSTROAD   y


to laugh and after a moment Njiru joined in, a curious moment of

kinship across the gulf of culture.     s

"i


A thread-like wail from the baby Njiru held in his hands, one palm
cradling the head, the other the buttocks, a morsel of black-eyed misery        
|

squirming in between.

Her name was Kwini and her mother was dead. Worse than that,

i

she'd died in childbirth, which made her an evil spirit, likely to attempt      
I

to reclaim her child. The body had been dumped at sea, a bundle of
rags strapped between the breasts to fool the mother into thinking she
had her baby with her, but still . . . Kwini's failure to thrive was
attributed to her mother's attempts to get her back.

She certainly wasn't thriving: skin hung in loose folds from her
thighs. Rivers looked round the circle at her grandmother's wrinkled
dugs, the flat chest of her nine-year-old sister, the highly developed
pectoral muscles of her father. He asked what she was being fed on.
Mashed-up yams softened by spit was the answer. The tiny hands
clawed the air as if she would wring life out of it.

Njiru passed the leaves he was holding several times between his
legs and then, stretching to his full height, attached them to the rafters
at the gable end, where the scare ghost shivered in the draught. 'Come
down and depart, you ghost, her mother; do not haunt this child and
let her live.'

' Will she live?' Rivers asked.

He had his own opinion, but wanted to know what Njiru would
say. Njiru spread his hands.

On their way back to Narovo, Rivers questioned him about the
ghosts of women who died in childbirth. This was not a rare form of
death, since the custom was for women to give birth alone, and there
was no tradition of midwifery. Such ghosts could not be named, he
already knew that. In the genealogies they were referred to as evil
spirits. It had startled him at first to be told quite casually that such and
such a man had married 'an evil spirit'.

They were called tomate pa na savo -- the ghosts of the confining
house -- Njiru explained, and they were dreaded, since their chief aim
was to ensure that as many other women as possible should die in the
same way.

One ghost in particular inspired dread: Ange Mate. She was more
powerful, more vengeful than any other ghost of the confining house.
Rivers had been taken to see Ange Mate's well, a hole in the ground


506
I HE G H () S I ROAD


which had once been a living spring, now choked with coconut husks.
Still, he sensed there was something more that Njiru was reluctant to
tell him. 'What does she doT he wanted to know. It puzzled him that
the men were obviously frightened of her, if it were true that the tomate pa na 
save selected women as their victims.

Reluctantly, Njiru said she lay in wait for men, particularly for men
who fell asleep on the beach at Pa Njale. 'But what does she do?' A
ripple of amusement among Njiru's retinue, a strange response in view
of the obvious terror she inspired. Then he guessed. When Ange Mate
came upon a man sleeping she forced him to have sex with her. 'Is he
good-fellow after?' Rivers asked.

No, seemed to be the answer, he suffered from a long list of complaints,
not the least of which was a disappearing penis. Rivers would
have liked to ask about the psychological effects, but that was almost
impossible. The language of introspection was simply not available.

By the time they reached Narovo, the sun was low in the sky.
Rivers went down to the beach, following the narrow bush path that
petered out into fine white sand. Hocart's head was a dark sleek ball,
far out, but then he saw Rivers, waved and shouted.

Slowly Rivers waded out, looking down, rather liking the dislocation
the refraction of the light produced, the misalignment of knees
and feet. As usual he was joined by a shoal of little darting black fish
who piloted him out into deeper waters -- always a moment of absolute
magic. Behind him, the bluish shadows of rocks crept over the white
sand.

After their swim they lay in the shallows, talking over the events of
the day. In the rough division of labour they'd mapped out between
them, death, funerary rites and skull houses belonged to Hocart, ghosts,
sex, marriage and kinship to Rivers, but it had already become clear
that no division really made sense. Each of them was constantly acquiring
information relating to one of the other's specialities.

Hocart, though, was in a mood to tease. 'Why've I got death when
you've got sex?' he wanted to know. 'Ghosts and sex don't go together.
Now ghosts and death

'All right, you can have ghosts.'

'No . . .' Hocart began, and then laughed.

Not true anyway, Rivers thought. On Eddystone ghosts and sex did go together, 
or so at least it must seem to men who fell asleep on the
beach at Pa Njale and woke between the ravening thighs of Ange Mate.

They lay in silence, almost too lazy to speak, as the shadows


507
THE G H O S The ROAD


lengthened and the sun began its precipitate descent. Nightfall on
Eddystone was abrupt, as if some positive force of darkness in the
waters of the bay had risen up and swallowed the sun. At last, driven
back to shore by the cooling water, they snatched up their clothes and
ran, laughing, back to the tent.


Mbuko was dying of a disease caused by the spirits of Kita, and had no
more than a few hours to live.

Kita, Njiru explained, causes a man to waste away 'till he too small
all bone he got no meat'. Certainly Mbuko could not have been more
emaciated. He looked more like an anatomical drawing than a man,
except for the persistent flutter of his heart under the stretched skin. He
lay on the raised wooden platform that was used for sleeping, though
nobody else now slept in the hut. Njiru said they were afraid. Outside,
bright sunshine, people coming and going. Now and then a neighbour
would look in to see if he were still alive. 'Soon,' the people sitting
round would say, indifferently, shaking their heads. Some were obviously
amused or repelled by his plight. 'Rakiana' was the word one
heard over and over again. Rakiana. Thin.

Even Njiru who, within the framework of his culture, was a compassionate
man (and we can none of us claim more, Rivers thought),
seemed to feel, not indifference or contempt exactly, but that Mbuko
had become merely a problem to be solved. Njiru looked across the
barely breathing heap of bones at Rivers and said, 'Mate.'

'Mate' in all the dictionaries was translated as 'dead'.

'No mate,' Rivers said, breathing deeply and pointing to Mbuko's
chest.

There and then, across the dying man, he received a tutorial, not
unlike those he remembered from his student days in Bart's. Mate did
not mean dead, it designated a state of which death was the appropriate
outcome. Mbuko was mate because he was critically ill. Rinambesi,
though quite disgustingly healthy, still with a keen eye for the girls,
was also mate because he'd lived to an age when if he wasn't dead he
damn well ought to be. The term for actual death, the moment when
the sagena -- here Njiru breathed in, slapping his belly in the region of
the diaphragm - the 'something he stop long belly' departed, was mate
ndapu. In pidgin, 'die finish'. 'Was the sagena the same as the soul?'
Rivers wanted to know. 'Of course it wasn't,' Njiru snapped, nostrils
flaring with impatience. Oh God, it was Bart's all over again. Heaven


508
THE GHOST ROAD


help (he unsuspecting public when we let you loose on them. The problem
with Mbuko, Njiru pressed on, as with all those who fell into the
power of Kita, was that he couldn't die. He seemed to be making a
very creditable stab at it, Rivers thought rebelliously. Kita could 'make
him small', but not kill him. 'Kita pausia,' Njiru said, stroking Mbuko.
'Kita loves him?' Rivers suggested. No, Njiru would know the word.
Kita was nursing him.

Njiru hung malanjari leaves from the gable end of the hut where
the scare ghost shivered in the draught, and began chanting the prayer
of exorcism. His shadow came and went across the dying man's face.
At one point Rivers got cramp in his legs and tried to stand up, but the
people on either side of him pulled him down. He must not walk
under the malanjari leaves, they said, or he would waste away and
become like Mbuko.

Hocart came into the hut, edging round the walls, keeping well
clear of the malanjari leaves, until he reached Rivers. Now that all eyes
were focused on Njiru, Rivers could take Mbuko's pulse. He shook his
head. 'Not long.'

Scattered all round were bits of calico and bark cloth streaked with
mucus, with here and there a great splash of red where Mbuko had
haemorrhaged. Now gobs of phlegm rose into his mouth and he
lacked the strength even to spit them out. Rivers found a fresh piece of
cloth, moistened it with his own saliva, and cleaned the dying man's
mouth. His tongue came out and flicked across his dry lips. Then a
rattle in the throat, a lift and flare of the rib-cage, and it was over. One
of the women wailed briefly, but the wail faltered into silence, and she
put a hand over her mouth as if embarrassed.

Rivers automatically reached out to close the eyes, then stopped
himself. Mbuko's body was bound into a sitting position by bands of
calico passed round his neck and under his knees. He was tied to a pole,
and two men carried him out into the open air. Rivers and Hocart
followed the little group down the path to the beach.

The body was propped up, still in a sitting position, in the stern of a
canoe, his shield and axe were placed beside him, and he was quickly
paddled out to sea. Rivers waited until the canoe was a shadow on the
glittering waters of the bay, then went back to the hut and gathered
together the stained cloths, which he buried at a safe distance from the
village. As he scraped dry earth over the heap of rags, he felt an intense
craving to scrub his arms up to the elbow in boiled water. That would


509
THE GHOST ROAD


or anybody's, men, just an anonymous draft that he'd shepherded a
stage further to their destination.

This section of the train had stopped well short of the platform, and
there was a big drop from the truck. Repeated crunches of gravel
under boots as men, still dazed from sleep, grappled with the shock of
rain and windswept darkness. Marshalled together, they half stumbled,
half marched alongside the train, on to the platform and through into
the station yard where, after an interminable wait, guides finally appeared,
their wet capes reflecting a fish gleam at the sky, as they
gesticulated and gabbled, directing units to their billets.

Prior saw his draft settled in a church hall, said goodbye and wished
them luck. Their faces turned towards him registered nothing, subdued
to the impersonality of the process that had them in its grip.

Then he was free. Felt it too, following the guide through unlit
streets, past that sandbagged witch's tit of a cathedral, along the canal
accompanied in the water by a doddering old crone of a moon.

The night, the silent guide, the effort of not slipping on broken
pavements, sharpened his senses. An overhanging branch of laburnum
flung a scattering of cold raindrops into his eyes and he was startled by
the intensity of his joy. A joy perhaps not unconnected with the
ruinous appearance of these houses. Solid bourgeois houses they must
have been in peacetime, the homes of men making their way in the
world, men who'd been sure that certain things would never change,
and where were they now? Every house in the road was damaged,
some ruined. The ruins stood out starkly, black jagged edges in the
white gulf of moonlight.

'Here you are, sir.'

A gate hanging from its hinges, roses massed round a broken pergola,
white ruffled blooms with a heavy scent, unpruned, twisting round
each other for support. Beyond, paths and terraces overgrown with
weeds. Lace curtains hanging limp behind cracked or shattered glass; on
the first floor the one window still unbroken briefly held the moon.

The guide preceded him up the path. No lock on the door, black
and white tiles in the hall -- a sudden sharp memory of Craiglockhart -- and 
then a glimmer of light at the top of the stairs and Hallet appeared,
holding a candle. 'Come on up. Mind that stair.'

Hallet had got his sleeping-bag out and arranged his belongings
carefully in a corner of what must once have been the master bedroom.
His fiancee's photograph stood on a chair.

'Potts and Owen are upstairs.'


5u
THE GHOST ROAD


or anybody's, men, just an anonymous draft that he'd shepherded a
stage further to their destination.

This section of the train had stopped well short of the platform, and
there was a big drop from the truck. Repeated crunches of gravel
under boots as men, still dazed from sleep, grappled with the shock of
rain and windswept darkness. Marshalled together, they half stumbled,
half marched alongside the train, on to the platform and through into
the station yard where, after an interminable wait, guides finally appeared,
their wet capes reflecting a fish gleam at the sky, as they
gesticulated and gabbled, directing units to their billets.

Prior saw his draft settled in a church hall, said goodbye and wished
them luck. Their faces turned towards him registered nothing, subdued
to the impersonality of the process that had them in its grip.

Then he was free. Felt it too, following the guide through unlit
streets, past that sandbagged witch's tit of a cathedral, along the canal
accompanied in the water by a doddering old crone of a moon.

The night, the silent guide, the effort of not slipping on broken
pavements, sharpened his senses. An overhanging branch of laburnum
flung a scattering of cold raindrops into his eyes and he was startled by
the intensity of his joy. A joy perhaps not unconnected with the
ruinous appearance of these houses. Solid bourgeois houses they must
have been in peacetime, the homes of men making their way in the
world, men who'd been sure that certain things would never change,
and where were they now? Every house in the road was damaged,
some ruined. The ruins stood out starkly, black jagged edges in the
white gulf of moonlight.

'Here you are, sir.'

A gate hanging from its hinges, roses massed round a broken pergola,
white ruffled blooms with a heavy scent, unpruned, twisting round
each other for support. Beyond, paths and terraces overgrown with
weeds. Lace curtains hanging limp behind cracked or shattered glass; on
the first floor the one window still unbroken briefly held the moon.

The guide preceded him up the path. No lock on the door, black
and white tiles in the hall - a sudden sharp memory of Craiglockhart and
then a glimmer of light at the top of the stairs and Hallet appeared,
holding a candle. 'Come on up. Mind that stair.'

Hallet had got his sleeping-bag out and arranged his belongings
carefully in a corner of what must once have been the master bedroom.
His fiancee's photograph stood on a chair.

'Potts and Owen are upstairs.'


511
THE GHOST ROAD


1

Prior went co the window and looked out at the houses opposite,
fingering the lace curtains that were stiff with dried rain and dirt. 'This     
p

is all right, isn't it?' he said suddenly, turning into the room.

They grinned at each other.

'Bathroom's just opposite,' Hallet said, pointing it out like a careful

host.   m

'«
'You mean it works?'

'Well, the bucket works.'

Prior sat down abruptly on the floor and yawned. He was too tired
to care where he was. They lit cigarettes and shared a bar of chocolate,        
jt

Prior leaning against the wall, Hallet sitting cross-legged on his

sleeping-bag, both of them staring round like big-eyed children, struggling
to take in the strangeness.

It'll wear off, Prior thought, lighting a candle and venturing across
the landing to find a room of his own. It'll all seem normal in the
morning.


But it didn't. Prior woke early, and lay lazily watching the shadows of
leaves on a wall that the rising sun had turned from white to gold. He
was just turning over to go back to sleep, when something black
flickered across the room. He waited, and saw a swallow lift and loop
through the open window and out into the dazzling air.

On that first morning he looked out on to a green jungle of garden,
sun-baked, humming with insects, the once formal flower-beds
transformed into brambly tunnels in which hidden life rustled and
burrowed. He rested his arms on the window-sill and peered out,
cautiously, through the jagged edges of glass, at Owen and Potts, who
were carrying a table from one of the houses across the road. He
shouted down to them, as they paused for breath, and they waved back.

He would have said that the war could not surprise him, that somewhere on the 
Somme he had mislaid the capacity to be surprised, but
the next few days were a constant succession of surprises.

They had nothing to do. They were responsible for no one. The war
had forgotten them.

There were only two items of furniture that went with the house.
One was a vast carved oak sideboard that must surely have been built
in the dining-room, for it could never have been brought in through
the door; the other was a child's painted rocking-horse on the top floor
of the house, in a room with bars at the window. Everything else they
found for themselves. Prior moved in and out of the ruined houses,


512
THE GHOST ROAD


taking whatever caught his eye, and the houses, cool and dark in the
midday heat, received him placidly. He brought his trophies home and
arranged them carefully in his room, or in the dining-room they all
shared.

In the evenings he and Hallet, Owen and Potts lit candles, sitting
around the table that was Owen's chief find, and with the tall windows,
the elaborately moulded ceilings, the bowls of roses and the wine
created a fragile civilization, a fellowship on the brink of disaster.

And then ruined it by arguing about the war. Or Potts and Hallet
argued. Potts had been a science student at Manchester University,
bright, articulate, cynical in the thorough-going way of those who
have not so far encountered much to be cynical about. The war, he
insisted loudly, flushed with wine, was feathering the nests of profiteers.
It was being fought to safeguard access to the oil-wells of Mesopotamia.
It had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Belgian neutrality, the
rights of small nations or anything like that. And if Hallet thought it
had, then Hallet was a naive idiot. Hallet came from an old army
family and had been well and expensively educated to think as little
as possible; confronted by Potts, he floundered, but then quickly
began to formulate beliefs that he had hitherto assumed everybody
shared.

Prior and Owen exchanged secretive smiles, though neither probably
could have said of what the secret consisted. Owen was playing with
the fallen petals of roses he'd picked that afternoon. Pink, yellow,
white roses, but no red roses, Prior saw.

'What do you think?' Potts asked, irritated by Prior's silence.

'What do I think? I think what you're saying is basically a conspiracy
theory, and like all conspiracy theories it's optimistic. What you're
saying is, OK the war isn't being fought for the reasons we're told, but
it is being fought for a reason. It's not benefiting the people it's supposed
to be benefiting, but it is benefiting somebody. And I don't believe
that, you see. I think things are actually much worse than you think
because there isn't any kind of rational justification left. It's become a
self-perpetuating system. Nobody benefits. Nobody's in control.
Nobody knows how to stop.'

Hallet looked from one to the other. 'Look, all this just isn't true. You're -- 
no, not you -- people are letting themselves get demoralized
because they're having to pay a higher price than they thought they
were going to have to pay. But it doesn't alter the basic facts. We are 
fighting for the legitimate interests of our own country. We are fighting


5i3
THE GHOST ROAD


in defence of Belgian neutrality. We are fighting for French independence. We 
aren't in Germany. They are in France.' He looked round the
table and, like a little boy, said pleadingly, 'This is still a just war.'

'You say we kill the Beast,' Owen said slowly. 'I say we fight
because men lost their bearings in the night.' He smiled at their expressions,
and stood up. 'Shall we open another bottle?'

Alone that night, the smell of snuffed-out candle lingering on the
air, Prior remembered the bowl of pink and gold and white roses, but
did not bother to recall Potts's and Hallet's arguments. This house they
shared was so strange in terms of what the war had hitherto meant that
he wanted to fix the particular sights and sounds and smells in his
mind. He felt enchanted, cocooned from anything that could possibly
cause pain, though even as the thought formed, a trickle of plaster
leaked from the ceiling of the back bedroom where a shell had struck,
the house bleeding quietly from its unstaunchable wound.


In the mornings he went into town, wandering round the stalls that
had been set up in front of the cathedral to sell 'souvenirs'. So many
souvenirs were to be found in the rubble of the bombed city that trade
was not brisk. Prior saw nothing that he wanted to buy, and anyway
he had a shelf of souvenirs at home, mainly collected on his first time
in France. He'd thought of them often at Craiglockhart as Rivers
probed his mind for buried memories of his last few weeks in France.
Souvenirs, my God. When the mind will happily wipe itself clean in
the effort to forget.

On the way home he saw Owen and Potts ahead of him, and
hurried to catch them up. Owen had found a child's lace-trimmed
surplice in the rubble near the cathedral and wore it as a scarf, the cloth
startlingly white against his sunburnt neck. Potts hugged a toby-jug to
his chest, stoutly refusing to admit it was hideous. They turned off the
road and cut through the back gardens, entering a world that nobody
would have guessed at, from the comparative normality of the road.

A labyrinth of green pathways led from garden to garden, and they
slipped from one to another, over broken walls or through splintered
fences, skirting bramble-filled craters, brushing down paths overgrown
with weeds, with flowers that had seeded themselves and become rank,
with overgrown roses that snagged their sleeves and pulled them back.
Snails crunched under their boots, nettles stung their hands, cuckoo
spit flecked a bare neck, but the secret path wound on. Hundreds of
men, billeted as they were in these ruined houses, had broken down


5H
THE GHOST ROAD


every wall, every fence, forced a passage through all the hedges, so that
they could slip unimpeded from one patch of ground to the next. The
war, fought and refought over strips of muddy earth, paradoxically
gave them the freedom of animals to pass from territory to territory,
unobserved. And something of an animal's alertness too, for just as Owen pushed 
aside an elderberry branch at the entrance to their own
garden, his ears caught a slight sound, and he held up his hand.

Hallet was in the garden, undressing. Dappled light played across his
body, lending it the illusion of fragility, the greenish tinge of ill-health,
though he was as hard and sun-tanned as the rest of them. As they
watched, not calling out a greeting as by now they should have done,
he stepped out of his drawers and out of time, standing by the pool
edge, thin, pale, his body where the uniform had hidden it starkly
white. Sharp collar-bones, bluish shadows underneath. He was going
to lie down in the overgrown goldfish pool with its white lilies and
golden insects fumbling the pale flowers. His toes curled round the
mossy edge as he gingerly lowered himself, gasping as the water hit his
balls.

They strolled across the tall grass towards him and stood looking
down. Legs bloated-looking under water, silver bubbles trapped in his
hair, cock slumped on his thigh like a seal hauled out on to the rocks.
He looked up at them lazily, fingers straying through his bush, freeing
the bubbles.

'Enjoying yourself?' Prior asked, nodding at the hand.

Hallet laughed, shielding his eyes with his other hand, but didn't
move.

'I'd be careful if I were you,' Owen said, in a tight voice. 'I expect
those fish are ravenous.'

And not just the fish, Prior thought.

'Anybody want some wine?' Potts asked, going into the house.

They drank it on the terrace, Hallet lying in the pond, till it grew
too cold.

'You know they might leave us here,' Owen said, squinting up into
the sun.

'Shut up!' Potts said.

Everybody touched wood, crossed fingers, groped for lucky charms:
all the small, protective devices of men who have no control over their
own fate. No use, Prior thought. Somewhere, outside the range of
human hearing, and yet heard by all of them, a clock had begun to
tick.

*
515
THE GHOST ROAD


11 September igi8


I don't think it helps Owen that I'm here. And it certainly doesn't help me 
that he's here. We're both walking a tightrope and the last thing
either of us wants or needs is to be watched by somebody who knows
the full terror of the fall.

At Craiglockhart we avoided each other. It was easy to do that
there, in spite of the overcrowding. The labyrinth of corridors, so
many turnings, so many alternative routes, you need never meet anybody
you didn't want to meet except, now and then, in Rivers's room
or Brock's, yourself.

Two incidents this week. We were all in town together and we saw
wounded being rushed through the streets -- some of them quite bad.
Hallet and Potts stared at them, and you could see them thinking, That
could be me, in a few days or weeks. Looking at the bandages, trying
to imagine what was underneath. Trying not to imagine. Fear: rational,
proportionate, appropriate fear. And I glanced at Owen and he was
indifferent. As I was. I don't mean unsympathetic, necessarily. (Though
it's amazing what you leave behind when the pack's heavy.)

The other was at supper last night. Hallet was cockahoop because
he'd found some flypaper on one of those stalls in the cathedral square.
Ever since we arrived we've been plagued by enormous wasps -- Owen
thinks they're hornets - and by flies, great, buzzing, drunk, heavy,
angry, dying bluebottles. And Hallet had solved it all. There was this
flypaper buzzing above our heads, revolving first one way, then the
other, with its cargo of dead and dying. The sound of summer on the
Somme.

I stuck it as long as I could, then climbed up on to the table and took
it down, carried it right to the end of the garden and threw it away as
far as I could. A pathetic effort -- it described a shallow arc and fluttered
to the ground. Hallet was quite seriously offended, and of course
completely bewildered.

'Don't blame me if you all get tummy upsets,' he said.

Owen started to laugh, and I joined in, and neither of us could stop.
Hallet and Potts looked from one to the other, grinning like embarrassed
dogs. They obviously thought we'd cracked. The trouble is
neither of us can be sure they aren't right. When I noticed the absence
of red roses, I looked at Owen and saw him noticing that I'd noticed.
It's no use.


516
THE GHOST ROAD


My servant, Longstaffe


I chose him at bayonet practice. He was running in with bloodcurdling
yells, stabbing, twisting, withdrawing, running on. I thought,
My God, textbook. Nothing of the sort -- I've realized since that what
he was actually doing was once-moreing unto the breach at
Agincourt.

I had a word with him. He knew why, of course, and he wanted the
job. Not a bad life, officer's servant, if you have to be here at all. He
told me he'd been a gentleman's gentleman before the war and that
clinched it. Later, when we were waiting for the train to Amiens, he
owned up. He was an actor. The nearest he'd ever got to being a
gentleman's gentleman was playing a butler at the Alhambra, Bradford.
A larger part than it sounded, he was anxious to point out, because in
this particular production the butler did it - a departure from convention
that so little pleased the inhabitants of Bradford that the play had
to be taken off after seventeen days.

Perhaps he was sure of me by then. Actually I found all that even
more irresistible. Phoney gentleman's gentleman, but then I'm a fairly
phoney gentleman myself.

An ironing board of a body, totally flat. Interesting gestures, though.
He's the only man I've ever known to open doors with his hips.
Perfectly plain, nondescript features. No Wanted poster would ever
find him, but also this curious feeling that his face could be anything he
wanted it to be, even beautiful, if the part required it. And burningly
ambitious. Knows tracts of Shakespeare off by heart. A curious, old
fashioned romantic patriot, though I don't know why I say that, there's
plenty of them about. Hallet, for instance. But then they don't all
quote, 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,' as he did, quite
without embarrassment, the other night while I was getting ready for
bed. I said very sourly indeed that a more appropriate quotation for
this stage of the war might be: 'I am in blood stepped in so far that
should I wade no more . . .' His leap across the room was rather
remarkable. He'd slapped a hand across my mouth, and we were
staring at each other, dumbstruck, before either of us had time to
think, his face chalk-white and I suspect mine as well, each trying to
remember what the penalty is for smacking an officer in the gob.
Quite possibly death.

Since then we've both gone very quiet, retreating behind the barriers
of rank, which are as necessary to his protection as to mine, though not


51?
THE GHOST ROAD


retreating quickly enough. Like the French lines at Agincourt, the
barriers have been thoroughly breached.


Friday, the ijth September (No bloody comment)


We're not going to join the battalion. The battalion's coming here to
join us. I suppose this explains this curious out-of-time holiday we've
been having. Ended today, anyway. Rode round inspecting billets.

Weather also changed, which makes the other changes somehow
more tolerable. Wind and rain, lowering grey clouds.


Saturday, 14 September


Watched the Manchesters march in, streaming rain, wet capes. Shattered
faces, bloodshot eyes. Been having a bad time. One or two faces I
recognized from last year. Before that? I don't think so. Nobody talks
about the losses. What they moaned about, sitting on bales of straw,
peeling socks off bloody feet, was the absence of fags. They'd been
rolling their own in bits of paper, torn-up envelopes, anything, no
tobacco of course, had to smoke weeds they picked by the side of the
road and dried by tying them to their packs whenever the sun shone.
I've written to Mam and Sarah and everybody else I can think of,
begging for Woodbines.


Sunday, 15 September


Joined battalion. Adjutant a nice worried-looking man who suggested
I might be battalion Gas Officer (which reveals a sense of humour not
otherwise apparent). Marshall-of-the-Ten-Wounds was there, striding
up and down, talking loudly. Everything about him -- skin, gestures,
expression, posture, voice -- bold, free, coarse. Unscrupulous? Perhaps,
I don't know, at any rate he doesn't care. Enjoys life, I think. By
temperament and training a warrior. Bold, cunning, ruthless, resolute,
quick of decision, amazingly brave -- and if that's a human being then a
human being isn't what I am. He's spent his entire adult life gravitating
towards fighting -- impossible to imagine him leading any other sort of
life.


5i8
THE GHOST ROAD


Last night, our last night in Amiens, there was a great storm, flashes
of sheet lightning, wind buffeting and slogging the house.

I'd just got to bed when I heard a strange rumbling from above.
Hallet appeared in the doorway, white-faced and staring. Only starlight
to see by and the whole house with its broken windows so draughty
the candle kept being blown out. We got an oil-lamp from the kitchen.
Hallet said, 'Is it the guns?' I said, 'Of course it bloody isn't, it's coming
from upstairs.'

The stairway leading to the upper floor and the nursery is narrow.
We got to the nursery door, paused, looked at each other. Hallet's face
illuminated from below had bulges under the eyes like a second lid. I
pushed the door open and a blast of cold wind from the broken
window hit me. All I saw at first was movement at the far end of the
room and then I started to laugh because it was just the rocking-horse
rocking. The wind was strong enough to have got it going, I can't
think of any other explanation, and its rockers were grinding away on
the bare wooden floor.

It ought to have been an anti-climax, and at first I thought it was.
We moved the thing away from the window, out of the draught, and
went downstairs still laughing, telling Potts, who peered round the door of his 
room, there was nothing to worry about, go back to sleep,
but in my own room with the lamp out I lay awake and all night long
that rumbling went on in my head.


TEN


They didn't have to wait long for their proper death.

Ngea was a strong, vigorous man, the most powerful chief on the
island after Rembo. Everything to live for, apparently, and yet, as one
saw so often in Melanesia, he was not putting up a fight. He lay in his hall,
watching the scare ghost turn and turn in the draught, and his life lay, it
seemed to Rivers, like a dandelion clock on the palm of his open hand.

His condition was so bad that, at one point, Emele, his wife, and the
other women began to wail, the long, drawn out, throbbing, musical
wail of the women, but then the sick man rallied slightly and the
wailing was abandoned.


519
THE GHOST ROAD


Rivers said goodbye to him, promised to see him again tomorrow,
though he knew he wouldn't, and walked back to the tent. It was dark
by the time he got back, and the green canvas of the tent glowed with
the light of the lamp inside it. Hocart's shadow, sharply black and
elongated, reached hugely over the roof. Rivers pushed a heavy weight
of damp washing aside and went in.

Hocart was sitting cross-legged on the ground, with a pencil held
sideways in his mouth, typing up his notes. 'I had to retreat because of
the midges.'

'Midges?'

'Whatever.'

Hocart was careless with quinine, careless with the mosquito nets.
Rivers threw himself down on his bed, clasped his hands behind his
head and watched him. After a few seconds Hocart pulled his shirt
over his head, and fanned himself with a sheaf of blank pages. As
always the heat of the day was trapped inside the tent, and their bodies
ran with sweat.

'You've lost weight,' Rivers said, looking at the shadows between
Hocart's ribs. 'Rakiana, that's the word for you.'

'Well,' Hocart said, round the pencil. 'Just as long as your pal Njiru
doesn't start trying to put me out of my misery . . .'

'Is he my pal?'

A quick glance. 'You know he is.'

They worked for a couple of hours, ate some baked yam pudding
that Namboko Taru had made for them, worked again, then turned
off the lamp.

An hour or so later Rivers heard the sound of footsteps approaching
the tent. Hocart had fallen asleep, one raised arm shielding his eyes, the
pressure of the pillow pushing his cheek and mouth out of shape.
Enough moonlight filtered through the canvas for the shadow of the
passer-by to stalk across the inside of the tent. A minute later another,
taller shadow followed.

Mali? Mali was a girl of thirteen who'd recently retired to the
menstrual hut for the first time. When she'd re-emerged, five days
later, arrangements for her defloration were already well in hand. A
young man, Runi -- he'd be about eighteen -- had paid her parents the
two arm rings that entitled him to spend twenty consecutive nights
with her, and had decided -- it was his decision, the girl had no say in
the matter -- to share the privilege with two of his friends.

Runi was considered a bit of a pest. Only the other day he and his


520
THE GHOST ROAD


two closest friends -- presumably the two he'd invited to share Mali -- had
climbed some kanarium trees and pelted their unfortunate owners with
unripe nuts. Rivers had been reminded of Rag Week. The old people
grumbled, and then said, what can you expect, young men cooped up
on the island sitting about like old women, instead of being off in their
canoes, as they ought to have been, burning villages and taking heads.

Whispers, quite close by. A startled cry, almost a yelp, then grunts,
groans, moans, a long crescendo of sobbing cries.

Hocart woke up, listened. 'Oh God, not again.'

'Shush.'

There was a belief on the island that a girl's defloration is never the
first time, because her first bleeding means the moon has already lain
with her. The men denied they believed it, insisting it was just a story
they told the girls to reassure them, which at least implied a certain
tenderness. He hoped so. She looked such a child.

A few minutes' whispering, and the grunts began again. What it is
to be eighteen. Another cry, this time definitely male, and footsteps
coming back.

'One down, two to go,' Hocart said.

'You realize for the rest of their lives they won't be able to say each
other's names?'

No reply. Rivers wondered if he'd drifted back to sleep but when
he turned to look, caught the gleam of eye white under the mosquito
net. More footsteps. Another shadow climbed the far wall of the tent.
A short pause, whispers, then the gasps began again.

Rivers sighed. 'You know, Rinambesi says when a chief dies the last
thing that happens, used to happen, rather, is a great head-hunting raid,
followed by a feast, and all the girls are available/ree to all the warriors.
And not reluctant either, apparently. They run into the sea to greet them.'

'Head-hunting as an aphrodisiac?'

'Why not?'

'They seem to be doing all right without it,' Hocart said, as the
moans got louder.

'No babies, though.'

The genealogies made grim reading. Families of five or six had been
common three or four generations ago. Now many marriages were
childless.

The last shadow came and went. Rivers supposed he must
have slept, because it seemed no time at all before the grey early
morning light made the mosquito nets as stark and sinister as shrouds.


521
THE GHOST ROAD


Fowl-he-sing-out was the pidgin term for this pre-dawn hour, and the
fowls had started, first a bubbling trickle of notes, always the same
bird, he didn't know its name, rising to a frenzy of competing shrieks
and cries. But this morning there was a new noise. At first he lay,
blinking sleepily, unable to attach meaning to it, but then he realized it
was the wailing of women, almost indistinguishable at this distance
from the sound of flutes. And he knew Ngea was dead.


They arrived at Ngea's hall to find the corpse bound into the sitting   ._

position, propped up against a pillar. A stout stick had been strapped to       
\

its back, keeping the head and neck more or less erect -- a sort of
external spine. Ngea had been bathed and dressed in his best clothes,
the lime on his face and in his hair freshly painted, bunches of riria
leaves, a plant forbidden to men in life, fastened to his necklaces.
Beside him sat his widow, Emele, not crying or wailing with the other
women. Very calm, very dignified.

While the women rocked and wailed Njiru was systematically destroying
the dead man's possessions, with the exception of the axe
which he had set aside. One rare arm ring after another was smashed.
Rivers squatted beside Njiru, and asked, in a low voice so as not to
disturb the mourners, why they had to be destroyed.

'You make him no good he go Sonto. All same Ngea he stink, he
rotten, bymby he go Sonto.'

The wailing went on all day, people coming from across the island
to bid Ngea farewell. Towards evening -- surely, Rivers thought, the
disposal of the corpse could not be much longer delayed -- Njiru hung
a bunch of areca nuts from the rafters by the scare ghost, took down a
cluster and held it out in front of them all. He waited till the last wail
faltered into silence and every eye was on him, before he began to
pray. 'I take down the portion of the chiefly dead.' He bowed towards
the corpse, which gazed back at him with glazed eyes. 'Be not angry
with us, be not resentful, do not punish us. Let them drink and eat,
break coconuts, open the oven. Let the children eat, let the women eat,
let the men eat, and be not angry with us, you chiefly dead, oh, oh, oh.'

The curious sound, half howl, half bark, that ended prayers on
Eddystone. Njiru put a nut in his mouth and ate it. The people kept
glancing nervously at Ngea, but Njiru went round the circle, offering
the cluster of nuts to each person in turn. Every man, woman and child
took one and ate it. Even a small child had a tiny crunched-up fragment
forced into its mouth.


522
THE GHOST ROAD


Ngea, without further ceremony, was slung on to a pole and carried
off'into the bush', they said, though in fact they took him to the beach,
where he was placed in a stone enclosure -- an era -- with his axe and his
shield at his feet. Still propped in a sitting position, his head kept erect by
the stick, he looked out over the low stone wall, westwards, to the sunset.
Food was left with him, and food for his mother and father, the 'old
ghosts'. Once, Njiru said, and there was no mistaking the bitterness in his
voice, a slave would have been killed at this moment, and the head placed
between Ngea's feet. Njiru glared at Rivers, as if he held him personally
responsible for the abolition of the custom. 'Now no all same.'

Next day Rivers went to Ngea's hall to offer his condolences to
Emele, and was confronted by an extraordinary sight. A wooden
enclosure had been built inside the hall, similar in size and shape to the
stone era in which Ngea's corpse had been placed, but with higher
walls. Inside this enclosure, knees bent up to her chin, hands resting on
her feet, in exactly the same position as the corpse of her husband, sat
Emele. She had been there, it seemed, all night, and from the expression
of agony on her face it was clear cramp had set in.

A number of widows squatted round the enclosure, looking like
stumps of wood in their brown bark loincloths. Many of them were his
regular informants on such topics as sexual relations, kinship, the
arrangement of marriage. Rivers mimicked Emele's cramped position,
and asked for the word. Tonga polo, they said reluctantly, glancing at
each other. Tonga polo, he repeated, making sure he'd got the inflection
right. But his efforts to speak their language were not received with the
usual maternal warmth. He thought they looked nervous.

'How long?' he asked, crouching down again.

But they wouldn't answer, and when he looked round he saw that
Njiru had come into the hall and was standing just inside the door.


Before Ngea's death Njiru had agreed to take Rivers and Hocart to see
the cave at Pa Na Keru. It was situated near the summit of the highest
mountain on the island, and it was a morning's walk, the early stages
through thick bush, to get there. Rivers was inclined to think Ngea's
death would lead to the postponement of the trip, but when he emerged
from the tent the following morning it was to find Njiru, surrounded
by a much larger retinue than usual, waiting for him.

He gave them leaves to wear to protect them from the spirits of the
mountain, and the whole group set off in good spirits, laughing and
chattering, though they fell silent in the late morning as the ground


523
I

THE GHOST ROAD


*

sloped steeply upwards and the muscles of thighs arid back began to
ache. The path up the mountain, like all the paths on the island, was so
narrow that they had to go in single file.

A solemnity had settled over the gathering. Rivers watched the
movement of muscles in the back ahead of him, as they toiled and
sweated up the slope. Before them was a massive rock-wall with a cave
set into it, like a dark mouth. They slipped and slithered up towards it,
sending showers of small pebbles peppering down behind them. The
final slope was encumbered with big rocks and boulders, and other,
flatter stones, some of them sharp. It was near noon, and their shadows
had dwindled to ragged black shapes fluttering around their moving
feet. One of the men picked up a stone and threw it at the cave mouth
to scare away the ghosts. Rivers and Hocart were the only people
there never to have visited the cave before, and they were not allowed
to approach until Njiru had prayed that they might be protected from
disease. While the prayer went on they watched the others bob down
and disappear under the hanging wall of rock.

The cave was low but surprisingly deep, deep enough for the far end
to be hidden in shadow. A flat stone near the entrance was called the
ghost seat. This was where the new ghost sat and occasionally, to pass
the time, drew on the walls. Further in, on the cusp of darkness, was
another boulder where the old ghosts sat. 'All old tomate come and
look new tomate,' they were told.

Rivers turned to Njiru and pointed to the seat of the old ghosts. 'Man
he stink, he rotten, bymby he go Sonto. Why him no go Sonto?' he asked.

Njiru spread his hands.

Various marks on the wall were interpreted as being the drawings of
the new ghosts. Hocart started sketching the marks and recording the
identifications he was given. A man, a spirit, pigs, a war canoe.

Njiru wanted to pursue the matter of the old ghosts. He did not
himself believe, he said, that there were ghosts in the cave. It was a, a ...
His patience with pidgin ran out. A varavara, he concluded. As nearly as
Rivers could make out, this meant a metaphor, a figure of speech.
Increasingly now, when they were alone, they tried to understand
concepts in the other's language, to escape from the fogged communication
of pidgin. The language barrier was more formidable than Rivers
had initially supposed, for in addition to the ordinary dialect there was the
'high speech' of ritual, myth and prayer. There was also, though he had
not been permitted to hear it, talk blong tomate: the language of ghosts.

While talking, they had unconsciously wandered deeper into the


524
The H F G H (1 S The ROAD


cave. Now Rivers touched Njiru's arm and pointed to a narrow slit in
the back wall. They had to clamber over fallen rocks to reach it, and
when they did, it seemed to be too small to admit even a very thin
man. Once, Njiru said, the cave had been 'good fellow' right into the
centre of the mountain, but then an earthquake had dislodged part of
the roof. Rivers knelt down and peered into the darkness. If he crawled
he was sure he could get through. And he'd brought a torch with him,
not knowing whether the cave would be dark or not. He turned on his
back and wriggled through, catching his arm, feeling a wetness that he
thought might be blood. On the other side he stood up tentatively,
and then stretched his arms high above his head. He had a sense of
immense space around him. The cave was big. He was reaching in his
back pocket for the torch when he realized Njiru was following him
through. He put his hand into the hole, trying to shield the other man's
deformed back from the jagged edge of the rock.

They stood together, breathing. Rivers shone his torch at the floor
and cautiously they moved deeper into the cave. He put a hand out
and touched something that slithered away under his fingers, then
swung the torch round, a weak sickly ring of yellow light that revealed
what for a second made him doubt his sanity: the walls were alive.
They were covered in heaving black fur.

Bats, of course. After the first jolt of fear, it was obvious. He directed
the torch at the ceiling where more bats hung, thousands of them,
hundreds of thousands perhaps, little sooty stalactites. As the torch
swept over them, they raised their heads, frenzied little faces, wet pink
gums, white fangs, all jabbering with fear.

Moving very slowly and quietly, not wanting to disturb them further,
he again shone the torch at the ground, so that they stood,
disconnected feet and legs, in a pool of light. He shouldn't have been
startled by the bats, because he knew - Njiru had mentioned it - that
in the old days it had been a regular outing for the men of Narovo to
go and hunt bats in the cave at Pa Na Keru. But then one day, or so the
legend said, a man took the wrong turning and, while his companions
wound their way out of the mountain, his every step was leading him deeper into 
it. At last he stumbled upon another exit, and made his
way back to the village, but, though he'd been missing less than a
week, he returned an old man. He stayed with his mother for three
days, but then his face turned black and he crumbled away into dust.

Nobody had followed them into the inner cave. Hocart was busy
with his drawings and the islanders were presumably afraid of the


525
The HE GHOST ROAD


legend. Was Njiru also afraid? If he was, he didn't show it. They could
hear talk and laughter only a few feet away, in the outer cave, but their
isolation in this hot, fur-lined darkness was complete.

This was the first time he'd been alone with Njiru since Ngea's
death, and Rivers wanted to talk about Emele: partly because any
ceremony connected with the death of a chief was important, but
partly too because he felt concern for the woman herself.

' Tonga polo,' he said.

He felt Njiru withdraw.

'How long?' he persisted. 'How many days?'

Njiru shook his head. 'Man old time he savvy tongo polo, now no all
same.'

The last words were accompanied by a dismissive chopping movement
of his hand, not intended to make contact with anything, but his
fingers clipped the end of the torch and sent it clattering to the ground,
where it continued to shine, a single yellow eye focused on them in the
darkness. Then the walls lifted off and came towards them. Rivers
barely had time to see the beam of light become a tunnel filled with
struggling shapes before he was enclosed in flapping squeaking screaming
darkness, blinded, his skin shrinking from the contact that never came.

He stood with eyes closed, teeth clenched, senses so inundated they'd
virtually ceased to exist, his mind shrunk to a single point of light.
Keep still, he told himself, they won't touch you. And after that he
didn't think at all but endured, a pillar of flesh that the soles of his feet
connected to the earth, the bones of his skull vibrating to the bats'
unvarying high-pitched scream.

The cave mouth disgorged fleeing human beings; behind them the
bats streamed out in a dark cloud that furled over on to itself as it rose,
like blood flowing from a wound under water. Eventually, shocked
into silence, they all turned to stare, and watched for a full minute,
before the stream thinned to a trickle.

Inside the cave, Rivers and Njiru opened their eyes. Rivers was not
aware of having moved during the exodus, indeed would have sworn
that he had not, but he discovered that he was gripping Njiru's hand.
He felt . . . not dazed, dazed was the wrong word. The opposite of
dazed. Almost as if a rind had been pared off, naked, unshelled, lying in
contact with the earth. Wonderingly, in the intense silence, they gazed
round the grey granite walls, with here and there in the vastness black
squares of baby bats hung upside-down to await their mothers' return.

*


526
THE GHOST ROAD


A shaft of sunlight struck his eyes.

'Sorry,' Miss Irving said, and pulled the curtain a little way back.
'What sort of night did you have?

'So-so.'

He seemed to have spent the entire night between hot, fur-lined
walls and the fur had got on to his teeth.

'Here's your tea,' she said, putting the tray across his knees.

He drank it gratefully, sending out messages to various parts of his
body to find out what the situation was. Ghastly, seemed to be the
general response.

'Don't you think you should have a doctor?' She smiled at him.
'Doctor.'
'No. All he'd do is tell me to stay in bed and drink plenty of fluids. I
can tell myself that.'

'All right. Ring if there's anything you want.'

'Would you mind drawing the curtains?'

The darkness reminded him of the cave. All night he'd had bats
clinging to the inside walls of his skull. But now at least there was a
breeze, the curtains breathed gently. But he was still too hot. He
kicked off the covers, unbuttoned his jacket and flapped the edges, ran
his tongue round his cracked lips. Hot.


The sun beat down the moment they left the cave. It was past noon,
but the hard bright white rocks reflected heat into their faces. They
walked more slowly on the way back, Rivers intensely aware of Njiru
walking just ahead of him, though they did not speak. Near the village
they began, by mutual consent, to lag behind the others. Hocart turned
to wait, but Rivers waved him on.

They sat down on an overturned tree trunk covered in moss. The
sun crashed down, beating the tops of their heads, like somebody
hammering tent pegs into the ground. And yet even in these sweaty
clothes, the shoulders of his shirt thickly encrusted with bat droppings,
Rivers had the same feeling of being new, unsheathed.

They sat tranquilly, side by side, in no hurry to begin the mangled
business of communication. A slight breeze cooled their skin.

'Tongo polo,' Rivers said at last, because that's where they'd left off.
How long? he asked again. How many days?

A bright, amused, unmistakably affectionate look from Njiru. There
was no fixed time, he said, though eighteen days was common. His
grandmother had observed tongo polo for two hundred days, but that


52?
THE GHOST ROAD


was exceptional because Honiu, his grandfather, had been a great chief.
The men of Roviana blew the conch for her.

Blew the conch? Rivers asked. What did that mean?

A short silence, though not, Rivers thought, indicating a reluctance
to go on speaking. At that moment Njiru would have told him anything.
Perhaps this was the result of that time in the cave when they'd
reached out and gripped each other's hands. No, he thought. No.
There had been two experiences in the cave, and he was quite certain
Njiru shared in both. One was the reaching out to grasp each other's
hands. But the other was a shrinking, no, no, not shrinking, a compression of 
identity into a single hard unassailable point: the point at which
no further compromise is possible, where nothing remains except pure
naked self-assertion. The right to be and to be as one is.

Njiru's grandfather, Homu, was famous for having taken ninety
three heads in a single afternoon. Through his grandmother he was
related to Inkava, who, until the British destroyed his stronghold, had
been the most ferocious of the great head-hunting chiefs of Roviana.
This was his inheritance. Rivers glanced sideways at him, close enough
to see how the white lime flaked on the taut skin of his cheekbones.
Njiru was speaking, not out of friendship -- though he felt friendship -- but 
out of that hard core of identity, no longer concerned to evade
questions or disguise his pride in the culture of his people.

The blowing of the conch, he said, signifies the completion of a
successful raid. He turned and looked directly at Rivers. The widow of
a chief can be freed only by the taking of a head.


ELEVEN


Monday, 16 September 1918


We live in tamboos -- a sort of cross between a cowshed and an
outdoor privy. Corrugated iron walls and roof-- bloody noisy when it
rains, and it's raining now -- carpeted with straw that rustles and smells
and gleams in the candle-light. Fields outside - perfectly reasonable
fields when we arrived. Now, after last night's heavy rain and the
constant churning of boots and wheels, there's a depth of about eighteen


528
THE GHOST ROAD


inches of mud. The duckboards arc starting to sink. Oh, and it gets
into everything. The inside of my sleeping-bag is not inviting -- I was
tempted to sleep outside it last night. But. Mustn't complain. (Why
not? The entire army survives on grousing.) In fact mud and duck
boards are about the only familiar things left.

I've got a permanent feeling of wrongness at the nape of my neck.
Exposure's the right word, I suppose, and for once the army's bad joke
of a haircut isn't to blame. We're out in the open all the time and I'm
used to a war where one scurries about below ground like a mole or a
rat. (Rats thrived on us - literally. We must have devastated the
moles.) It occurred to me last night that Rivers's idea of my using
myself as a test case - the football he told me to dribble across - has one
fundamental flaw in it. Same loony -- different war. As far as I can
make out, Rivers's theory is that the crucial factor in accounting for
the vast number of breakdowns this war has produced is not the
horrors -- war's always produced plenty of those -- but the fact that the
strain has to be borne in conditions of immobility, passivity and helplessness.
Cramped in holes in the ground waiting for the next random
shell to put you out. If that is the crucial factor, then the test's invalid 
because
every exercise we do now is designed to prepare for open,
mobile warfare. And that's what's happening -- it's all different.

I told Rivers once that the sensation of going over the top was sexy.
I don't think he believed me, but actually there was something in
common -- racing blood, risk, physical exposure, a kind of awful daring about 
it. (Obviously I'm not talking about sex in bed.) But I don't feel
anything like that now. There's, for me, a nagging, constant apprehension,
because I'm out in the open and I know I shouldn't be. New kind
of war. The trouble is my nerves are the same old nerves. I'd be
happier with a ton or two of France on top of my head.

Day was spent on general clean-up. The men's reward was compulsory
games. I stood obediently on the touchline and yelled and waved.
A cold grey day. The ball seemed to fly across the lowering sky like a
drenched, heavy, reluctant bird. The men were coated in mud, plumes
of steam rising from their mouths. All tremendously competitive, of
course -- 'C' against 'D' -- and curiously unreal. Street-corner football
played in the spirit of public-school rugby. I stood and watched my
red-faced, red-kneed compatriots charging up and down a social No
Man's Land. But at least officers and men play together - it's the only
informal contact there is outside the line.

At half-time some of them stripped off their shirts and the steam


529
THE GHOST ROAD


rose from their bodies, red and white, chapped hands and faces, as they
stood panting. Jenkins waved at somebody off the pitch and for a
moment his face was turned towards me, greenish eyes, red hair, milky
white skin blotched with freckles, I had to make an effort to look
away. Mustn't get the reputation of 'having an eye for Tommy'. Bad
for discipline. Though I don't know what the fuck else there is to look
at.

That's the other change: the men's expressions. That look on
Jenkins's face as he turned to wave. Before, there were basically two
expressions. One you saw at Etaples, the rabbit-lockedupwitha-stoat
look. I've only ever seen that expression in one other place, and that
was the Royces' house. Family of four boys in the next street to us.
Their father used to make them line up every night after he'd had a
few pints, and lift their shirt-tails. Then he'd thrash them with a ruler
on their bare burns. Every night without fail. One of them asked once,
'What's it for, Dad?' And he said, 'It's for whatever you've done that
you think you've got away with.' But my God they could fight. One
of them was the bane of my life at school.

The other expression was the trench expression. It looks quite daunting
if you don't know what it is. Any one of my platoon could have
posed for a propaganda poster of the Brutal Hun, but it wasn't brutality
or anything like that. It was a sort of morose disgust, and it came from
living in trenches that had bits of human bone sticking out of the walls,
in freezing weather corpses propped up on the fire step, flooded
latrines.

Whatever happens to us it can't be as bad as that.


Wednesday, 18 September


Today we went to the divisional baths, which are in a huge, low barn.
For once it was sunny and dry and the march, though long, was
not too tiring. They weren't ready for us and the men sat on the
grass outside and waited, leaning on each other's knees or stretched
out on the grass with their arms behind their heads. Then it was their
turn.

The usual rows of rain butts, wine barrels, a couple of old baths
(proper baths). The water any temperature from boiling to tepid depending
on where you were in the queue. They take off their clothes,
leave them in piles, line up naked, larking about, jostling, a lot of


530
The H F GHOST ROAD


jokes, a few songs, everybody happy because it's not the dreary routine
of drills and training. Inside the barn, hundreds of tiny chinks of
sunlight from gaps in the -walls and roof, so the light shimmers like
shot silk, and these gleams dance over everything, brown faces and
necks, white bodies, the dividing line round the throat sharp as a
guillotine.

One of my problems with the baths is that I'm always dressed.
Officers bathe separately. And . . . Well, it's odd. One of the things I
like sexually, one of the things I fantasize about, is simply being fully
dressed with a naked lover, holding him or her from behind. And
what I feel (apart from the obvious) is great tenderness - the sort of
tenderness that depends on being more powerful, and that is really, I
suppose, just the acceptable face of sadism.

This doesn't matter with a lover, where it's just a game, but here the
disproportion of power is real and the nakedness involuntary. Nothing
to be done about it. I mean, I can scarcely trip about with downcast
eyes like a maiden aunt at a leek show. But I feel uncomfortable, and I
suspect most of the other officers don't.

Through the barn, out into the open air, dressing in clean clothes, a
variety of drawers and vests, most of them too big. The army orders
these things to fit the Sons of Empire, but some of the Sons of Empire
didn't get much to eat when they were kids. One of the men in my
platoon, barely regulation height, got a pair of drawers he could pull
up to his chin. He paraded around, laughing at himself, not minding in
the least when everybody else laughed too.

Watching him, it suddenly struck me that soldiers' nakedness has a
quality of pathos, not merely because the body is so obviously vulnerable,
but because they put on indignity and anonymity with their
clothes, and for most people, civilians, most of the time, the reverse is
true.

March back very cheerful, everybody singing, lice eggs popping in
the seams of the clean clothes as soon as the bodies warm them through.
But we're used to that. And I started thinking -- there's a lot of time to
think on marches -- about Father Mackenzie's church, the huge shadowy
crucifix on the rood screen dominating everything, a sheaf of
hollyhocks lying in the chancel waiting to be arranged, their long
stems scrawling wet across the floor. And behind every altar, blood,
torture, death. St John's head on a platter, Salome offering it to Hero
dias, the women's white arms a sort of cage around the severed head
with its glazed eyes. Christ at the whipping block, his expression


53i
THE GHOST ROAD


distinctly tamiliar. St Sebastian hamming it up and my old friend St
Lawrence on his grid. Father Mackenzie's voice booming from the
vestry. He loved me, the poor sod, I really think he did.

And I thought about the rows of bare bodies lining up for the baths,
and I thought it isn't just me. Whole bloody western front's a wanker's
paradise. This is what they've been praying for, this is what they've
been longing for, for years. Rivers would say something sane and
humorous and sensible at this point, but I stand by it and anyway
Rivers isn't here. Whenever a man with a fuckable arse hoves into
view you can be quite certain something perfectly dreadful's going to
happen.

But then, something perfectly dreadful is going to happen. So that's
all right.


Sunday, 22 September


Morning -- about the nearest we ever get to a lie-in (I've been up and
on the go by 5.30 every day this week). Wyatt's shaving and there's a
voluntary service starting just outside. Smell of bacon frying, sound of
pots and pans clattering about and Longstaffe whistling as he cleans my
boots. Hallet's on the other side of the table writing to his fiancee,
something that always takes horns and hours. And the rain's stopped
and there's a shaft of sunlight on the ground and the straw looks like
gold. The razor rattling against the side of the bowl makes a pleasant
sound. The ghost of Sunday Morning at home -- roast beef and gravy,
the windows steamed up, the News of the World rustling as Dad drops
half of it, the Sally Army tuning up outside.


Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.


Twenty -- perhaps a few more -- male voices in unison. Longstaffe's
singing the alternative version:


Forward Joe Soap's army
Marching without fear
With your brave commander
Safely in the rear.


532
THE GHOST ROAD


He boasts and skitcs

From morn till night

And thinks he's very brave,

But the men who really did the job

Are dead and in their grave.


Sung very cheerfully with great good humour. We're all looking
forward to Sunday dinner, which is roast beef and roast potatoes. I'm
famished. And there is not going to be a gas drill during this meal. I know.


Tuesday, 24 September


Bussed forward. Men sang all the way, in high spirits, mainly I think
because they didn't have to march.


Thursday, 26 September


The nearest village is in ruins. Extraordinary jagged shapes of broken
walls in moonlight, silver mountains and chasms, with here and there
black pits of craters thronged with weeds.

Some of the other villages aren't even ruins. You're not supposed to
mention the effects of enemy fire, but a lot of this is the effect of
British fire so perhaps I can mention it. Nothing's left. We passed
through one village that hadn't a single wall above knee height. Old
trenches everywhere, tangles of rusting barbed-wire, rib-cages of horses
that rotted where they fell. And worse and worse.

The men, except for the one or two I remember from last year, are
still reserved. Sometimes when they're alone at night you hear laughter.
Not often. They guard the little privacy they have jealously. Most of
the 'devotion' people talk about is from officers -- some of the officers -- to 
the men. I don't myself see much sign that it's reciprocated. If they
trust anybody they trust the NCOs, who've older, for the most part,
and come from the same background. But then I wasn't born to the
delusion that I'm responsible for them.

What I am responsible for is GAS. Either the Adjutant wasn't
joking or if he was it's a continuing joke. My old nickname -- the
Canary -- has been revived. Owen for some reason is known as the
Ghost. Evidently when he disappeared into Craiglockhart -- and I


533
/


1 II E GH OST ROAD


suspect didn't write to anybody because he was ashamed (I didn't
either) -- they concluded he was dead.

Gas drill happens several times a day. The routine lectures aren't
resented too much (except by me -- I have to give them), but the
random drills are hated by everybody. You're settling down for the
night, or about to score a goal, or raising the first forkful of hot food to
your lips, and whaml Rattles whirl, masks are pulled on, arms and fists
pumped, and then the muffled hollow shout GAS! GAS! GAS! Creatures
with huge eyes like insects flicker between the trees. What they
hate -- what I hate -- is the gas drill that comes while you're marching
or doing PT or bayonet training, because then you have to go on,
flailing about in green light, with the sound of your breathing -- In.
Out. In. Out. -- drowning all other sounds. And every movement
leeches energy away.

Nobody likes the mask. But what I have to do is watch out for the
occasional man who just can't cope with it at all, who panics as soon as
it comes down over his head. And unfortunately I think I've found
one, though he's in my company which means I can keep an eye on
him.

The attitude to gas has changed. It's used more and feared less. A
few of the men are positively gas happy. OK, they think, if a whiff or
two gets you back to base and doesn't kill you, why not? It's become
the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot and a lot harder to
detect.

At dinner I told Hallet and Potts that four years ago we were told to
protect ourselves from gas by pissing on our socks. You folded one
sock into a pad and used the other to tie it over your mouth and nose.
They gaped at me, not sure if I was serious or not. 'Did it work?' asked
Hallet. 'No,' I said. 'But it didn't half take your mind off it.' And they
both laughed, quite relieved, I think, to know I was only having them
on.

It used to give you spots round your mouth. Not that that was our
main worry at the time.

And today was pay day. After an afternoon spent crawling running
falling crawling again across wet fields, the men were so caked in mud
they looked as if they were made of it. Tired, but pay day's always good,
even if you've nothing to spend it on, and they were chattering, jostling,
laughing as they queued. Then the rattles whirred. A groan went up (with
the real thing there isn't time to groan -- more practice needed) and
then the usual routine: clenched fists, pumping arms, GAS! GAS! GAS!


534


THE GHOST ROAD


They went on queuing. Mud-brown men standing in mud, the
slanting rays of the sun gilding the backs of their hands, the only flesh
now visible. I was sitting next to Hardwick, ticking off names on the
list. One man, waiting immediately behind the man who was being
paid, turned his face a little to one side, and I saw, in those huge insect
eyes, not one but two setting suns.


Friday, 28 September


Since yesterday evening there's been a continuous bombardment. All
the roads forward arc choked, drivers stuck in the mud, swearing at
each other, a flickering greenish-yellow light in the sky and every now
and then the whine and thud of a shell. A constant drone of planes
overhead, all going one way.
We move forward tonight.


TWELVE


Rivers walked along the path between the tent and Narovo village,
the full moon casting his shadow ahead of him. All around were the
scuffles and squeals of the bush, the scream of some bird that turned
into a laugh, then silence for a moment, more scuffles, more squeals,
the night-long frenzy of killing and eating.

Once in the village he went straight to Ngea's hall, stooped and
went in. The scare ghost shivered at his approach.

The women were asleep, the widows who tended Emele. He tiptoed
past them, and knelt down, calling, 'Emele! Emele!', an urgent whisper
that caused one of the widows to stir and mutter in her sleep. He
waited till she settled before he called the name again. When there was
no reply he pushed the door open and there, curled up in the prescribed
position, back bent, hands resting on her feet, was Kath.

'Kath, Kath,' he said. 'What on earth are you doing here?' And the
movement of his lips woke him up.

He sat on the edge of the bed, peering at his watch. Four o'clock,
never a good time to wake. His throat was very sore. He swallowed


535


THE GHOST ROAD


several times, and decided what was needed was that good old medical
stand-by, a glass of water.

In the bathroom he blinked in the white light, caught a glimpse of
himself in the looking-glass and thought, My God, is this really what
you've done to yourself? He took a moment to contemplate baggy
eyes and thinning hair, but he wasn't sunk so deep in neurosis or
narcissism as to believe an overhead light at four a.m. lays bare the
soul. He drank a glass of water and went back to bed.

Despite the hour the curtains let in a little light, starlight, he supposed,
there was no moon tonight. It was curiously reminiscent of the light in
the tent on Eddystone. He beat the pillows into a more comfortable
shape, and tried to get back to sleep.


'Leave the flap open,' Rivers said.

It had been hotter than usual, an oven of a day in which people and
trees had shimmered like reflections in water. The earth outside the
tent was baked hard. He watched a line of red ants struggle across the
immensity, a group at the rear carrying a dead beetle many times their
own size.

Hocart emerged from the tent. 'I don't think I can face sleeping in
there tonight.'

'We can sleep out here if you like. As long as you're careful with the
net.'

The remains of their evening meal lay on the table. Neither of them
had felt like eating much.

'What do we do?' Hocart said, sitting cross-legged on the ground
beside Rivers. 'What do we do if they come back with a head? Or heads, God help 
us.'

Rivers said slowly, 'Logically, we don't intervene.'

'Logically, we're dead. Even if we decide we won't tell the authorities,
how do they know we won't? From their point of view, the only
safe thing to do is --'

'Obey the law.'

'Get rid of us.'

'I don't think they'll do that.'

'Could they?'

'Well, yes, probably. The point is, it won't happen, there isn't going
to be a head.'

'But if-'

'If there is we'll deal with it.'

THE GHOST ROAD


A long, stubborn, unconvinced silence from Hocart.

'Look, you know what the penalties are. If they go on a raid there's
no way the British Commissioner isn't going to hear about it. And
then you've got a gunboat off the coast, villages on fire, trees cut
down, crops destroyed, pigs killed. Screaming women and children
driven into the bush. You know what happens.'

'Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?'

'Are you suggesting head-hunting should be allowed?'

'No.' Tightlipped.

'Good. When these people were taking heads they virtually depopulated
Ysabel. It had to be stopped.'

'So how are they going to get her out?'

Rivers hesitated. 'I don't know. She can't stay in there for ever.'

What he secretly thought, but was superstitiously afraid of saying,
was that the situation would end in Emele's suicide. He could see no
other way out.

The following morning he went to see Namboko Taru. She'd
become very fond of him (and he of her) ever since his miming of
alternating constipation and diarrhoea had kept her amused while Njiru
removed the nggasin from her belly.

She and her friend Namboko Nali had been bathing in the sea and
their hair smelled of salt water. Taru's scrawny brown arms were
folded across her breasts as she sat, with her back against the wall of her
hut, steaming gently in the sun, while hens stepped delicately around
her, pecking the dust. He sat beside her, admiring the gleam of dull
emerald in the cockerel's neck feathers, as the village came slowly to
life.

After a few minutes' gossip he started asking her about love charms,
the subject they'd talked about at their last meeting. Three other
women came out and listened. He got out his notebook and took
down the words of the charm Taru supplied, aware that more than the
usual amount of whispering and giggling was going on. Taru offered
him betel to chew, and thinking, What the hell, who needs teeth? he
accepted it. The women giggled again. A little while later Taru offered
him lime, and to humour her he let her draw white lines on his
cheekbones. The giggling was now almost out of control, but he
pressed on to the end of the charm, at which point it was revealed that
the words only became efficacious if the man accepted betel and lime
from the woman's basket.

He laughed with them, and by the time they'd finished they were


537


THE GHOST ROAD


on such terms that he felt he could ask them anything. Even about
Emele and tongo polo. Taru vehemently denied there was any question
of suicide. Suicide, ungi, was totally different. Taru and Nali had helped
Kera, the widow of the previous chief, to kill herself. She had tried
poisoning herself with tobacco and that hadn't worked. And then
she'd tried to hang herself, but the bough had broken. So they'd held a
pole for her, high above their heads, and she'd twined a strip of calico
round her throat and hanged herself from the pole. Garrotted more
like, Rivers thought. It would not have been a quick or an easy death.
What decided whether the widow would ungi or observe tongo polo? he
asked. It was her choice, they said.

Returning to the tent, he found Hocart lying outside, having spent
the first part of the morning washing clothes. He was asleep, or resting,
with his arms across his face shielding his eyes from the sun. Rivers put
his foot on his chest and pressed lightly.

Hocart peered up at him, taking in the white lines on his face. 'My God.'

'I think I just got engaged.'

A bubble of laughter shook Hocart's ribs. 'Lucky woman.'


Sleeping was difficult, because of the heat, even after they'd taken their
beds outside the tent. Sometimes they gave up altogether, and went to
lie in the shallows, where the small waves, gleaming with phosphorescent
light, broke over them.

Rivers had become obsessed by Emele. Wherever he was, whatever
he was doing, the thought of the woman cramped inside the enclosure,
inside the hut, followed him until he saw every other aspect of life on
the island in the shadow of her imprisonment.

In the mornings he would go down to bathe and watch the canoes
go out, foam flashing from the paddles, a wordless song drifting across
the water: 'Aie, aie, die.' All vowel sounds, it seemed to be, no consonants.
And then the smack of water being slapped to lure bonito into
the nets.

It was still idyllic. His own happiness did not lessen, but always,
now, there were these two points of darkness: Emele cramped in her
enclosure; Ngea rotting in his era. Once he walked up the path on the
other side of the beach, unable to explain his desire to see Ngea, for the
facts of physical decomposition neither fascinated nor frightened him.
A corpse was something one buried or dissected. Nothing more. And
yet he needed to see Ngea.


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1HE GHOST ROAD


The smell reached him when he was no more than half way up the
path. He pinched his nostrils, breathing through his open mouth, but
even so a few yards further on he had to abandon the attempt. A black
cloud of flies, so dense it looked solid, rose at his approach, heat made
audible. He backed away, as much as anything because they reminded him of the 
bats in the cave, and that experience, the sense of being
unshelled, peeled in some way, that had seemed so positive at the time,
now made him afraid. He was open to whatever might happen in this
place, open in the way that a child is, since no previous experience was
relevant.

The heat continued. From mid-afternoon onwards there was a curious
bronze light in the sky, which became brownish towards evening,
as if even the air were singed. Occasional flicks of wind teased the
outermost branches of the trees, but did not disturb the intense brooding
stillness.

Rivers slept uneasily, waking finally at 'fowl-he-sing-out', aware of
having heard a new and different sound. He lay and listened and was
just about to turn over and try to snatch an extra hour when it came
again: the brazen blare of a conch shell.

He was on his feet and outside the tent in a matter of minutes. The
bush distorted sounds, bouncing echoes back, but then he was aware of the crash 
of hurrying footsteps through the undergrowth, people running
down to the beach. He shook Hocart awake, and followed the
crowd, holding back a little, not knowing how secret this was, or how
much it might matter that he was witnessing it.

He saw Njiru at the water's edge, draped in a white cloth, with a
staff in his hand, looking out over the bay.

A canoe was heading in, quickly, paddled by Lembu, and in the
stern was a bundle of some kind. He was too far away to see what it
was, but an ah went up from the crowd, and suddenly, the women and
girls began running into the sea, prancing like horses until they reached
a depth where they could cast themselves forward and swim. Clinging
to the canoe's side, they escorted it into the shallow water, and Lembu
got out, everything about him shining, teeth, hair, eyes, skin, and
hauled the canoe up the beach. He walked back to the stern, unwrapped
the bundle, and dragged the contents out on to the sand. A small boy
about four years old.

Rivers walked down to the canoe, since nobody seemed to care
whether he saw this or not. The child's face was tear-stained, streaked
with dirt and snot. He was not actually crying now, though irregular


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THE GHOST ROAD


hiccups shook his thin chest. As people surged towards him and stared,
he moved closer to his captor, resting one grubby hand on Lembu's
naked thigh.

Rivers went up to Njiru. 'Is that your head?' he asked, unaware that
he spoke English, not pidgin.

'Yes,' Njiru said steadily.

He took the child from Lembu and, surrounded by excited, smiling
people, carried him up the beach path to the village. Rivers followed,
but kept well back as the crowd gathered outside Ngea's hall. Lembu
blew the conch as they entered the village, and again inside the hall.
After a while Eniele emerged, hobbling, resting her arms on the
shoulders of Taru and Nali. Lembu and Njiru followed her out, and
there was general rejoicing, except from the small boy, who stood
alone at the centre of the throng, his eyes like black bubbles that at any
moment might burst.


THIRTEEN


4 October 1918


What can one say? And yet I've got to write something because however
little I remember now I'll remember less in years to come. And
it's not true to say one remembers nothing. A lot of it you know you'll
never forget, and a few things you'll pray to forget and not be able to.
But the connections go. Bubbles break on the surface like they do on
the flooded craters round here - the ones that've been here years and
have God knows what underneath.

The night of I think the ist (dates go too) we lay all night in a trench
one foot deep -- the reward of success because this was a German trench.
Another reward of success was that we had no British troops on our
left, we'd raced ahead of them all. I think I'm right in saying we were
the only units that broke through the Hindenburg line and maintained
the position. It was dark, early evening, deep black, and we expected a
counter-attack at dawn. Until then there was nothing to'do but wait,
both intolerably cramped and intolerably exposed, enfilading
machine-gun fire on three sides. 'Cramped' isn't a figure of speech

THE GHOST ROAD


either. The trench was hardly more than a scraping in the earth. Any
careless movement and you'd had it. And for a lot of the time we wore
gas masks, because there'd been a very heavy gas barrage put down by
our side and it lingered. The whole area smelled like a failed suicide
attempt, and I kept hearing Sarah's voice saying about Johnny, // was
our own gas, our own bloody gas. In spite of all the drills some of the men
were slow to put their masks on, one or two had bad reactions, and
then Oakshott decided to have a panic attack. I crawled along to him,
not past people, over them, one eel wriggling across the others in the
tank, and tried to calm him down. I remember at one point I burst out
laughing, can't remember why, but it did me good. There's a kind of
angry laughter that gets you back to the centre of yourself. I shared a
bar of chocolate with Longstaffe and we huddled together under my
greatcoat and tried to keep warm. And then the counter-attack came.

Two bubbles break here. Longstaffe sliding back into the trench
with a red hole in his forehead and an expression of mild surprise on
his face. And the bayonet work. Which I will not remember. Rivers
would say, remember now -- any suppressed memory stores up trouble
for the future. Well, too bad. Refusing to think's the only way I can
survive and anyway what future?

The whole thing was breakdown territory, as defined by Rivers.
Confined space, immobility, helplessness, passivity, constant danger
that you can do nothing to avert. But my nerves seem to be all right.
Or at least no worse than anybody else's. All our minds are in flight,
each man tries to reach his own accommodation with what he saw.
What he did. But on the surface it's all jollity. We're marching back, through 
the same desolation, but towards safety. Another battalion has
leap-frogged us into the line. And every time my right foot hits the
ground I say, over, over, over. Because the war's coming to an end, and
we all know it, and it's coming to an end partly because of what we
did. We broke through. We held the position.


5 October


I think the worst time was after the counter-attack, when we lay in
that trench all day surrounded by the dead. I still had Longstaffe by my
side, though his expression changed after death. The look of surprise
faded. And we listened to the wounded groaning outside. Two
stretcher-bearers volunteered to go out and were hit as soon as they


54i


THE GHOST ROAD


stood up. Another tried later. After that I said, No more, everybody
keep down. By nightfall most of the groaning had stopped. A few of
the more lightly wounded crawled in under cover of darkness and we
patched them up as best we could. But one man kept on and on, it
didn't sound like a human being, or even like an animal, a sort of
guttural gurgling like a blocked drain.

I decided I ought to try myself, and took Lucas with me. Not like
going over the top used to be, climbing out of the bloody trench. Just a
quick slither through the wire, barbs snagging the sleeves, and into the
mud. I felt the coldness on my cheek, and the immense space above,
that sense you always get when lying on the ground in the open of the
earth as a ball turning in space. There was time to feel this, in spite of
the bullets -- which anyway frightened me less than the thought of
having to see what was making that sound.

The gurgling led us to him. He was lying halfway down the side of
a flooded crater and the smell of gas was stronger here, as it always is
near water. As we started down, bullets peppered the surface, plop,
plop, plop, an innocent sound like when you skim a flat stone across a
river, and bullets flicked the rim where we'd been a second before and
sent cascades of loose earth down after us. The gurgling changed as we
got closer so he knew something different was happening. I don't
think he could have known more than that. I got right up to his feet,
and started checking his legs for wounds, nothing, but then I didn't
expect it. That sound only comes from a head wound. What made it
marginally worse was that the side of the head nearest me was untouched.
His whole frame was shaking, his skin blue in the starlight as
our skins were too, but his was the deep blue of shock. I said 'Hallet'
and for a second the gurgling stopped. I gestured to Lucas and he
helped me turn him further over on to his back, and we saw the
wound. Brain exposed, a lot of blood, a lot of stuff not blood down
the side of the neck. One eye gone. A hole -- I was going to say in his
left cheek -- where his left cheek had been. Something was burning,
casting an orange light into the sky which reflected down on us. The
farm that had been one of our reference points. The underside of the
clouds was stained orange by the flames.

We got a rope underneath him and started hauling him round the
crater, up the other side, towards our trench and all the time I was
thinking, What's the use? He's going to die anyway. I think I thought
about killing him. At one point he screamed and I saw the fillings in
his back teeth and his mouth filled with blood. After that he was quiet,


542


THE GHOST ROAD


and it was easier but then a flare went up and everything paled in the
trembling light. Bastards, bastards, bastards, I thought. I heard a movement
and there on the rim of the crater was a white face looking
down. Carter, who, I later discovered, had come out entirely on his
own initiative. That was just right. More than three and we'd have
been getting in each other's way. We managed to drag him back
through fire that was, if anything, lighter than before, though not
intentionally I think. Too little mercy had been shown by either side
that day for gestures of that sort to be possible.

We fell into the trench, Hallet on top of us. I got something damp
on my face that wasn't mud, and brushing it away found a gob of
Hallet's brain between my fingertips. Because he'd gone quiet on the
last stretch I expected to find him unconscious or dead, but he was
neither. I gave him a drink of water. I had to press my hand against his
face to get it down, because otherwise it slopped out of the hole. And
all the time I was doing it I was thinking, Die can't you? For God's
sake, man, just die. But he didn't.

When at last we were ordered to pull back I remember peering up at
the sky and seeing the stars sparse and pale through a gauze of greenish
light, and thinking, Thank God it's evening, because shells were still
coming over, and some of them were falling directly on the road. At
least we'd be marching towards the relative safety of night.

The sun hung on the lip of the horizon, filling the sky. I don't know
whether it was the angle or the drifting smoke that half obscured it,
but it was enormous. The whole scene looked like something that
couldn't be happening on earth, partly the sun, partly the utter lifelessness
of the land around us, pitted, scarred, pockmarked with stinking
craters and scrawls of barbed-wire. Not even birds, not even carrion
feeders. Even the crows have given up. And I stumbled along at the
head of the company and I waited for the sun to go down. And the
sodding thing didn't. IT ROSE. It wasn't just me. I looked round at
the others and I saw the same stupefaction on every face. We hadn't
slept for four days. Tiredness like that is another world, just like noise,
the noise of a bombardment, isn't like other noise. You see people
wade through it, lean into it. I honestly think if the war went on for a
hundred years another language would evolve, one that was capable of
describing the sound of a bombardment or the buzzing of flies on a hot
August day on the Somme. There are no words. There are no words
for what I felt when I saw the setting sun rise.


543


THE GHOST ROAD


6 October


We're far enough back now for officers from different companies to
mess together again. I sit at a rickety little table censoring letters, for
the post has arrived, including one for me from Sarah saying she isn't
pregnant. I don't know what I feel exactly. I ought to be delighted and
of course I am, but that was not the first reaction. There was a split
second of something else, before the relief set in.

Letters arrive for the dead. I check names against the list and write Deceased 
in a firm bold hand in the top left-hand corner. Casualties
were heavy, not so much in the initial attack as in the counterattacks.

Gregg died of wounds. I remember him showing me a letter from
home that had big 'kisses' in red crayon from his little girl.

Of the people who shared the house in Amiens only a month ago,
Potts is wounded, but likely to live. Jones (Owen's servant)
wounded, likely to live. Hallet's wounds are so bad I don't think he
can possibly survive. I see him sometimes lying in the lily pond in
the garden with the golden fish darting all around him, and silver
lines of bubbles on his thighs. More like a pattern than a picture, no
depth to it, no perspective, but brilliantly clear. And Longstaffe's
dead.

The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?

I look across at Owen, who's doing casualty reports with a Woodbine
-- now blessedly plentiful again -- stuck to his bottom lip, and
his hair, rather lank at the moment, flopping over his forehead. For
days after the battle he went round with his tunic stiff with blood,
but then I had blood and brains on me. We must have stunk like
the drains in a slaughterhouse, but we've long since stopped smelling
each other. He looks like one of the boys you see on street corners
in the East End. Open to offers. I must say I wouldn't mind. He
looks up, feeling himself the subject of scrutiny, smiles and pushes
the fags across. I saw him in the attack, caped and masked in blood,
seize a machine-gun and turn it on its previous owners at pointblank
range. Like killing fish in a bucket. And I wonder if he sees those
faces, grey, open-mouthed faces, life draining out of them before the
bullets hit, as I see the faces of the men I killed in the counterattack.
I won't ask. He wouldn't answer if I did. I wouldn't dare ask. For
the first time it occurs to me that Rivers's job also requires courage.

We don't even mention our own dead. The days pass crowded with
meaningless incident, and it's easier to forget. I run the ball of my


544


r


THE GHOST ROAD


thumb against the two first fingers of my right hand where a gob of
Hallet's brain was, and I don't feel anything very much.

We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember,
we don't feel, we don't think - at least not beyond the confines of
what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but
what does that mean now'?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are
completely steady. And we are still alive.


545


*!

Part Three

FOURTEEN


SHEER FIGHTING

BOTH SIDES PAY THE PRICE

HUNS WAIT FOR THE BAYONET


Prior would have been in that, Rivers thought. He picked the paper
up from his breakfast tray and made a real effort to concentrate. It was
clear, even from this gung-ho report, that casualties had been heavy.
No point checking the casualty lists yet: individual names took at least
a week to come through. But he could probably expect a field postcard
in the next few days, if Prior was all right. He'd sounded fine in his last
letter, but that was ten days ago.

Reading it, Rivers had felt the stab of envy he always experienced
on receiving letters from men serving in France. If the wretched war
had to happen he'd rather have spent it with Marshallofthe-Ten
Wounds than with Telford-of-the-Pickled-Penis. He tried to focus on
the details of the engagement, but the print blurred before his eyes.
And his boiled egg -- though God knows what it had cost Mrs Irving
to buy -- was going down like lead. He really thought he'd be sick if he
forced any more of it down. He took his glasses off, put them on the
bedside table and pushed the tray away. He meant only to rest a while
before starting again, but his fingers slackened and twitched on the
counterpane and, after a few minutes, the newspaper with its headlines
shrieking about distant battles slipped sighing to the floor.


Ngea's skull, jammed into the v of a cleft stick, bleached in the sun. A
solitary bluebottle buzzed in and out of the eye sockets and, finding
nothing there of interest, sailed away into the blue sky.

On his way down to the beach to bathe, Rivers paused to look at
the skull. Only a month ago he'd spoken to this man, had even held his
hand briefly on parting. No wonder the islanders wore necklaces of
pepeu leaves to guard themselves against tomate gani yambo: the
Corpse-eating Spirit.

Later the same day he saw the little boy whom Lembu had brought


549


THE GHOST ROAD

*f


back from Ysabcl squatting listlessly outside Njiru's hut, poking about
in the dust with a small stick. He was not crying, but he looked dazed.
The story was he'd been bought, but Rivers was not inclined to
believe it. In these islands -- still, in spite of the abolition of headhunting,
warrior communities -- not even the poorest family would
willingly part with a son. Abduction was more likely. He watched the
child for several minutes, wanting to go to him, and yet knowing the    i

appearance of a strange white man would only terrify him more.  *

'Are they going to kill him?' Hocart said, lying sleepless in bed that  4

night.  I

'No, they won't do that - they'd have to kill us too.'  *

'Perhaps that wouldn't worry them.'

'The Commissioner's response to it would.'

But after Hocart was uneasily asleep, twitching and muttering,
Rivers lay awake, thinking that if the islanders wanted to get rid of
them it wouldn't be too difficult. White men died of blackwater fever
all the time, and no doubt there were poisons that mimicked the
symptoms. You only had to look at Ngea's skull to know that by the
time the next steamer put in there wouldn't be enough of them left to
make investigation possible. Moreover, the next steamer would be
Brennan's, since he was the local trader, and, confronted by any sign of
trouble, he'd simply skedaddle as fast as possible. No, they'd just have
to wait and see, and be cautious.

Next morning, when he arrived in the village, the little boy had
gone.


They were invited to witness the placing of Ngea's skull in the skull
house. Njiru officiated.

At dawn they were woken by the screams of pigs being slaughtered,
and all morning columns of smoke had risen from the cooking fires. It
was noon before the ceremony started, the sun crashing down on
shoulders and heads, the heat intensified by two fires, the sacrificial fire
on the hearth in front of the skull house, and the common fire where
Rivers and Hocart sat along with people from the village and the
surrounding hamlets. Rivers looked out for the small captive boy, but
could not see him. Beside him Lembu was plaiting a creeper which he
used to tie Ngea's jaw-bone to his skull, before placing a diadem of
shells round the cranium and other shells in the sockets of the eyes.

Across the fire, moving figures shimmered in the heat. A woman
with a baby in her arms, Nanja, whose own child had died in the


550


THE GHOST ROAD


confining house and who was now nursing Kwini, the emaciated baby
whom Rivers had first seen with Njiru. The child "worried at the
nipple, guzzling and snuffling -- already her wasted thighs had begun
to fill out. She would live, he thought, and the idea cheered him for, to
western eyes, the stacked-up skulls made disturbing companions.

Njiru raised Ngea's crowned skull above his head, and a silence fell,
broken only by the careless cries of the children, but they were some
distance away. Rivers could follow most of Njiru's prayer without
need of an interpreter. 'We offer pudding, we offer pig, to you the
ghosts. Be propitious in war, be propitious in the sea fight, be propitious
at the fort, be propitious at the burning of the thatch. Receive the
chiefly dead . . .' Here Njiru placed Ngea's skull in the house. 'And be
you propitious and smite our enemies, oh, oh, oh!'

It was a prayer for success in the great head-hunting raid that ought
to have concluded the mourning for the dead chief. The Vavolo, the
Night Festival, at which all the young women were free -- tugele -- to
all the returning warriors. But the raid would not happen. The prayer
could not be answered. Njiru put pork and yam pudding in the sacrificial
fire, whose flames burned dull in the sunlight. Then he took the
remains of the pudding and walked round the stones that encircled the
clearing, placing a mouthful of food on each stone. The stones were
called totnate patu, stone ghosts, and were erected as memorials to men
who died and whose bodies could not be brought home. Rivers
watched him go from stone to stone.

Head-hunting had to be banned, and yet the effects of banning it
were everywhere apparent in the listlessness and lethargy of the people's
lives. Head-hunting was what they had lived for. Though it might
seem callous or frivolous to say so, head-hunting had been the most
tremendous/M« and without it life lost almost all its zest.

This was a people perishing from the absence of war. It showed in
the genealogies, the decline in the birth rate from one generation to the
next -- the island's population was less than half what it had been in
Rinambesi's youth -- and much of that decline was deliberate.

Against the background of such despair might not the temptation of
taking one small head in honour of a dead chief prove irresistible?
Raids, no, they couldn't do that, the punishment was too severe. But
who was to miss one small boy?

Rivers ate the baked yams and pork offered to him, but remained
thoughtful. Once he looked up to see Njiru on the other side of the
fire, a tall, lean, twisted shape wavering in the column of heat, and


55i


THF, GHOST ROAD


surprised on the other man's face an expression of -- bitterness? No,
stronger than that. Hatred, even.


Kundaite could interpret talk blong tomate: the language of ghosts.
Sometimes, he said, a meeting was held on the night the old ghosts
arrived to take the new ghost back to Sonto with them, and he would
question the ghosts and the people would hear them speak. Would this
be done for Ngea? Rivers asked. Kundaite didn't know, he wasn't
sure, he didn't think so. Would it be done if we give you ten sticks of
tobacco? Kundaite nodded. He was given five and promised the other
five the following morning. Would they hear Ngea speak? Hocart
asked. No, was the reply. 'Ngea he no speak yet. He all same small
fellow piccanini.' Kundaite, grasping his tobacco sticks, seemed to be worried. 
'Don't tell Njiru,' he said at last.

They all met at sunset in what had been Ngea's hall, and sat cross
legged around the fire. It had been made with green sticks and smoked
badly. They coughed, their eyes watered, they waited, nothing happened.
Outside it was totally dark, for the moon had not yet risen.
Nanja brought in dry sticks, feeding them into the fire skilfully, one
by one, until the flames crackled and spurted. Kwini cried and Nanja
jiggled and soothed her. Older children sat big-eyed in the firelight,
and Rivers felt his own eyelids grow heavy, for he had been up since
dawn walking miles in the heat. He blinked hard, making himself look
round the circle. Emele -- Namboko Emele as she must now be called -- was 
there, wearing brown bark cloth without lime or necklaces. But
not Njiru, a surprising absence surely, since he'd placed Ngea's skull in
the skull house.

Kundaite came in and sat beside the door in the side of the hut. At a
word from him the torches were extinguished, though Rivers could
still see people's faces clearly, leaping and shining in the firelight.
Silence fell, and deepened, and deepened again. Kundaite closed his
eyes and began to moan beneath his breath. Rivers watched him
sceptically, wondering whether the attempt to induce a trance state was
genuine or merely histrionic. Abruptly, Kundaite seemed to come to
himself. He put three sticks of tobacco in the fire as a sacrificial offering,
saying casually that the ghosts were on their way from Sonto. A long
silence. Nothing happened. Somebody suggested the ghosts were afraid
of a dog that was lying by the fire. The animal raised its head on hearing
its name, decided there was nothing to worry about and settled down
again with a sigh. Others said the ghosts were afraid of the white men.


552


THE GHOST ROAD


Rivcrs's back and thighs were aching from the squatting position.
Suddenly Kundaite said, 'Listen, the canoes.' It -was clear, looking
round the circle, that they were hearing the swish of paddles. Joy and
grief mingled on every face. Emele started the musical wailing
characteristic of the women, but stopped when Kundaite held up his
hand.

A tense silence. Then somebody whistled. The sound was curiously
difficult to locate. Rivers looked round the faces, but could not see
who was making the sound. The people began calling out names,
familiar to him from the genealogies, each person calling the name of a
relative who had recently died. Some not so recently. Namboko Taru
called for her grandmother. Then the name Onda was called and
somebody whistled again. Rivers could see Hocart also looking round
the room, trying to locate the whistler.

A discussion about the white men followed, the ghost's whistles
being translated by Kundaite. Who were the white men? Why were
they here? Why did they want to hear the language of ghosts? Did the
ghosts object to the white men's presence? Kundaite asked. 'What do we
do if they say "yes"?' Hocart asked, not moving his lips. 'Get out quick.'

But the ghosts did not object. Onda, whistling, said he had never
seen white men. Kundaite pointed to Rivers and Hocart. Onda, apparently
satisfied, fell silent. Kundaite's father, also called Kundaite, came
next and asked for tobacco. The living Kundaite put his last two sticks
in the fire, saying, 'Here is tobacco for you, Kunda. Smoke and depart.'
Namboko Rupe, Ngea's mother, spoke next, saying she had come to
take Ngea to Sonto. Other relatives of Ngea followed. At last Kundaite
said that Ngea himself was in the room.

A deeper silence fell. Rivers felt the hairs on his arms rise. Namboko
Emele began to wail for her husband. Kundaite said, Don't cry. He's
going to Sonto. Ngea's mother said, He must go now. He must blow
the conch and come to Sonto. By now the room was full of whistles,
slithering up and down the walls and all across the floor. At times the
sounds seemed almost to be a ripple running across the skin. Namboko
Emele began to wail again, and the other women joined in. 'Don't
cry,' Ngea's mother said again, through Kundaite's mouth. 'I have
come to take him to Sonto.' Then, Kundaite said, Ngea blew the
conch. Everybody in the room, except Rivers and Hocart, heard it,
and then the whistles faded and there was silence save for the musical
wails and cries of the women.


553


THE GHOST ROAD


Ten years later, throwing off hot sheets, Rivers reflected that the
questions the ghosts had asked had all been questions the living people
wanted answered. What we re the white men doing on the island? Were they as 
harmless as they appeared? Why did they want to hear the
language of ghosts? Was it possible the spirits might be offended by
their presence?

At Craiglockhart, Sassoon, trying to decide whether he should
abandon his protest and go back to France, had woken to find the
ghost of a dead comrade standing by his bed. And thereafter, on
more than one occasion, shadowy figures had gathered out of the storm, asking 
him, Why was he not in the line? Why had he deserted
his men?

The ghosts were not an attempt at evasion, Rivers thought, either
by Siegfried or by the islanders. Rather, the questions became more insistent,
more powerful, for being projected into the mouths of the dead.


Walking back to the tent, a circle of torchlight swaying round their
feet, their shoulders bumping as they tried to stay abreast on the
narrow path, Rivers and Hocart talked about the seance. A silly word
that didn't seem to suit the occasion, but Rivers couldn't think of a
better.

'Who was whistling?' Hocart asked.

'I don't know.'

The occasion had moved him in a way he'd never expected when
they sat down by that fire. They talked about it for a while, getting the
sequence of events clear in their minds, for they had not been able to
take notes. Then Rivers said, 'Njiru wasn't there.'

'No, I noticed that.'

Back at the tent Hocart said, 'Shall I light the lamp?'

'No, don't bother. Not for me anyway. I can't wait to get to bed.'
He was unbuckling his belt as he spoke, rubbing the skin underneath
where trapped sweat prickled. He kicked his trousers to one side and
lay down on the bed, only to cry out as his head came into violent
contact with something hard and cold. Hocart came in with the torch,
his face white behind the beam. On the pillow, indenting it as Rivers's
head would have done, was an axe. Rivers picked it up and held it
closer to the light. The carving on the handle was rather fine by the
standards of the island, and there was a knot, a flaw in the wood, close
to the blade.

'Somebody must have left it behind,' Hocart said uncertainly.


554


THE GHOST ROAD


'Well, yes, obviously.'

'No, I mean by accident. Whoever it is, he'll be back for it in the
morning.'

'I hope not,' Rivers said dryly. 'It's Ngea's.'

'Are you sure?'

Rivers indicated the knot in the wood. 'Yes, I remember this, I
noticed it when they put it in the era with him.' He stroked the blade.
'No, I'm afraid we've been asking too many awkward questions. We're
being warned.'


FIFTEEN


10 October 1918


Back into corrugated iron privies again, which are dry but in other
ways less comfortable than dug-outs. Owen has somehow managed to
stick a portrait of Siegfried Sassoon to the wall of his. Sassoon in
distinctly Byronic mode, I should say -- not the Sassoon / remember,
legging it down the main corridor at Craiglockhart with his golf-clubs
on his back, hell-bent on getting out of the place as fast as possible. I
stood and stared, gawped at it. And suddenly I was back in Rivers's
room, watching the late afternoon sun glint on his glasses during one
of his endless silences. Rivers's silences are not manipulative. (Mine are.
Always.) He's not trying to make you say more than you want, he's
trying to create a safe space round what you've said already, so you can
think about it without shitting yourself. White net curtains drifting in
on the breeze. Pok-pok, pok-pok, from the tennis courts, until somebody
misses and the rhythm goes.

Owen said, tentatively, something I didn't quite catch. Something
to the effect that we 'old Craiglockhartians' must stick together. Once
that would have made me puke. I always felt, watching Owen at
Craiglockhart, that there was some kind of fantasy going on, that he
was having the public-school education he'd missed. I always wanted
to say, it's a loony-bin, Owen. Who do you think you're kidding? I
don't feel that now -- perhaps because Craiglockhart was a shared
experience of failure, and the past few weeks have expunged it for


555


THE R II O S The ROAD


both of us. Wiped it out in blood, you might say, if you were histrionic,
and I am. And not our own blood either.

Would that remark deserve one of Rivers's silences? I don't know.
Sometimes I used to think he was back with his fucking head-hunters he
really does love them, his whole face lights up when he talks about
them -- and that gives him a slightly odd perspective on 'the present
conflict' as they say.

I've been recommended for the ME for going out to bring Hallet
in. I'd have been like a dog with two tails three years ago. Hallet's still
alive, anyway. More than a medal, I wish somebody would just tell
me I did the right thing.


11 October


Today we all had to stand up in front of the men and promulgate a
new order. 'Peace talk in any form is to cease immediately in the
Fourth Army.'

The brass hats needn't worry. Some of the men were sitting on bales
of straw cleaning equipment while one read aloud from the paper:
Austro-Hungarian Empire collapses, peace imminent, etc. Jenkins, a
wizened weasel of a man (must be over age, surely), hawked the accumulated
phlegm of four long years into his mouth and spat on his rifle.
Then he went back to polishing it. Can't think of a better comment.

And yet. And yet. We all, at some level, think we may have made
it, we may be going to be all right. At any moment now the guns may
stop. Oddly enough it doesn't help.

We spend our time in the usual way while 'at rest'. Baths, change of
clothes, general clean-up, exercises, compulsory games, church parade.
Oh, and of course, gas drills. A lot of the men are coughing and
hoicking and wheezing because they were slow putting on their masks.
And perhaps deliberately in some cases; perhaps some people thought
they'd get sent back. If so, they've been thoroughly disillusioned, and
the proof is the endless cough, cough, cough, cough that accompanies
all other activities. Owen irritated me profoundly by saying it was
their own fault. He put his mask on in time, he's all right, he says. I'm
afraid I let fly. The only person round here who has the right to be
smug about surviving a gas attack is me. ME.

When we got here we found a new draft had arrived from Scarborough.
They're sitting around at the moment, expecting to be


556


THE CHOST ROAD


welcomed, though so far they haven't been. Difficult to say why the
other men avoid them, but they do. Heads too full of battle to be able
to cope with all those clean, innocent, pink faces. A couple of them I
remember. One particularly useless boy, the bane of Owen's life at
the Clarence Gardens Hotel, until he upset some hot soup in the CO's
lap, after which everybody, including Owen, found him a lot more
tolerable. Waiters, drummer boys. They sit around, when they're not
being chivvied from one place to another, most of them dejected,
miserable. Frightened. A few strut up and down -- hard men -- real
killers -- and succeed only in looking even more like baby thrushes than
the rest.


12 October


Parcels arrived today. Shared out fags in parcels intended for the dead
and wounded. Tempers immediately improved. A lot of niggling
administrative jobs connected with feeding men from the new draft
into the companies. Get flashes from the battle while I'm filling in
forms. The man I bayoneted. What worries me is that he was middle
aged. Odd really -- it's supposed to be golden youth you mourn for.
But he was so obviously somebody who should have been at home,
watching his kids grow up, wondering whether brushing his hair over
the bald patch would make it more or less obvious, grumbling about
the price of beer. And yes, you could see all this in his face -- with some
people you can. Some people do look exactly what they are. Fuck it.

Meanwhile more exercises. Route marches. We feed our faces on
precisely adequate quantities of horrible food. Bread now has potatoes in it. 
(Makes an interesting combination with the wood chippings.)


15 October


Last night we were entertained by The Peddlers, the whole battalion,
and a few officers invited over from our neighbours on the left. Among
whom was Marshall-of-the-Ten-Wounds, now acting It Colonel, who
applauded every turn with childlike glee. Exactly what you wouldn't
expect him to do. At the end of the evening, when things are allowed
to get a bit slushy, somebody sang 'Roses of Picardy':


557


THE GHOST ROAD


Roses arc doweling in PicarJy
But there's never a rose like you.


Not a bad voice -- it soared over the privies and the tents, the columns
of smoke from the fires -- and I looked along the row and there was
Marshall with great big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. I envied him.


16 October


Bainbrigge's dead. I remember him in the oyster bar in Scarborough a
couple of nights before we left. We were all pissed, but Bainbriggc was
pissed enough to quote his own poems (than which there is no pisscdcr).
He was talking to Owen, saying real anti-war poems ought to celebrate
what war deprives men of -- wait for it -- 'Beethoven, Botticelli, beer
and boys.' Owen kicked him under the table, for my benefit, I think.
A wasted kick.

More new arrivals from England yesterday. And I've been transferred
to a tent, just as the weather's laying on the first real taste of
winter. The misery of sleety rain under canvas. Not that we spend
much time under it. We're out all day doing route marches, column
into line, consolidation, etc., etc. And gas drills.

But now it's evening. The men are leaning against their packs or
each other's knees, aching legs allowed to sprawl at last, writing to
wives, mothers, girlfriends. Perhaps even one or two to Beethoven &
Co. I said I wasn't born to the delusion that I'm responsible for them.
True. (True I wasn't born to it, true it's a delusion.) But I wouldn't like
it to be thought I didn't care. So. Going round the group nearest to
me. Wilson's got a fucking great nail sticking up through the heel of
his left boot. We've all had a go at it: hammers, pliers, tent pegs, God
knows what. Still it sticks up, and since it breaks the skin he's quite
likely to get a septic sore, unless I can find him another pair of boots.
Which ought to be easy, but isn't. Unfortunately, the septic sore won't
be enough to get him out of the line if we have to go back there. It'll
just exhaust him, make every step a greater misery than it need be.

Oakshott, who's sort of on the fringes of the group -- he's taken to
not talking to people -- is well on the way to cracking up. (I should
know.) The thing is he's not windy, he's a perfectly good soldier, no
more than reasonably afraid of rifle and machine-gun bullets, shells,
grenades. (Let's not ask ourselves how afraid that is.) He isn't even


558


THE G If 0 S The ROAD


windy about gai, though inevitably it comes across like that. He's just
terrified of the mask. I don't know what to do with him. Once or
twice recently I've noticed him lagging behind in gas drills, and I've
noticed myself letting him get away with it. Which I mustn't do. If he gets 
away with it, they'll all start.

Next to him, in front of him rather, is Moore. Moore's wife spent
the evening of the Friday before last in the lounge bar of the Rose and
Crown (I know it well) in the company of one Jack Puddephat, who
has a good job at the munitions factory (same one Dad works at) and
brings home five quid a week. Moore's sister-in-law, a public-spirited
soul, was kind enough to write and tell him about it.

Heywood's kid has tonsillitis and the doctor's all for whipping them
out. Heywood's all for leaving well alone, but the letter he's writing
now won't get there in time.

Buxton's missus is expecting their first. The birth doesn't seem to
worry her, but it terrifies him. His own mother died in childbirth, and
he's convinced himself the same thing's going to happen to her.

Jenkins writes the most incredibly passionate love letters to his wife.
They've been married since before the Flood, but obviously nothing's
faded. I get erections reading them. Nothing else I've done sexually has
filled me with such shame. In fact it's the only thing that's ever filled
me with any shame. He must know they're censored, and yet still he
writes, page after page. Perhaps he needs to say it so much he somehow
manages to forget that I read them first? It's the mental equivalent of
the baths. Here I sit, fully clothed as it were, knowing my letters to
Sarah won't be censored. I suppose random checks are carried out on
officers' letters, but at least it's done somewhere else, and not by people
you have to see every day.

Peace talk goes on whether orders forbidding it are promulgated or
no. On the night we heard the Germans had agreed to peace talks there
was a great impromptu party, officers and men together. Everybody
sang. And then next day in John Bull there's Bottomley saying, No, no,
no and once again no. We must fight to the bitter end. (Whose end? ) 7 don't 
want any more talk about not being out to destroy the German nation -- that is 
just what I am out for . . .

But it doesn't wash with the men. Not this time. In fact some of
them have taken to going to the latrines waving copies of John Bull.

Nobody here sees the point of going on now.


559


THE GHOST ROAD


18 October


But others do. We leave here today, going back into the line.


SIXTEEN

October rain spattered the glass. Outside in Vincent Square golden
leaves were trodden in the mud. Rivers stopped coughing, put his
handkerchief away, and apologized.

"S all right,' Wansbeck said. 'I should be apologizing to you. I gave
it you.'

'At least I can't give it back,' Rivers said, wiping his eyes. 'In fact
you and I are about the only two round here who can't get it.'

'Things are getting pretty bad, aren't they? I mean, on the wards. I
don't suppose I could do anything to help?'

Rivers looked blank.

'Lifting patients. It just seems bloody ridiculous a great big chap like
me sitting around doing nothing while some poor little nurse struggles
to lift a twelve-stone man on her own.'

'It's very kind of you,' Rivers said carefully. 'But I really don't think
the authorities would allow it. In any case you're not doing
"nothing".'

Silence. The hint was not taken up. Rivers forced himself to open
his shoulders, knowing his tension was communicating itself to Wansbeck,
though it was only the tension of driving himself through a long
day while still feeling very far from well. 'How have you been?'

'Smell's gone.' A flicker of amusement. 'I know it wasn't there, but
it's still nice to be rid of it.'

'Hmm, good.' What pleased Rivers even more than the vanished
smell was the hint of self-mockery. The one expression you never see
on the faces of the mentally ill. 'When did that happen?'

'Just faded gradually. I suppose about the middle of last week I
suddenly realized I wasn't worried about it any more.'

'And the dream?'

'It isn't a dream.'

'The apparition, then.'


560


THE GHOST ROAD


'Oh, we still see quite a bit of each other.'

'Do you ever miss a night?'

A faint smile. 'You mean, does he ever miss a night? No.'

A long silence. Rivers said, 'It's difficult, isn't it, to talk about . . .
beliefs?'

'Is it?'

'I find it so.'

Wansbeck smiled. 'What a very honest man you are.'

'I wanted to ask if you believe in life after death?'

A groan, followed by silence.

It is difficult, Rivers thought. He could list all the taboo topics on
Eddystone, but in his own society it seemed to him the taboos had
shifted quite considerably in recent years. It was almost easier now to
ask a man about his private life than to ask what beliefs he lived by.
Before the war . . . but one must beware of attributing everything to
the war. The change had started years before the war.

'No,' Wansbeck said at last.

'You had to think.'

'Yes, well, I used to believe in it. I was brought up to. I suppose one
doesn't like to have to admit it's gone. Faith.'

'What changed your mind?'

A flare of the eyebrows. Rivers waited.

'Corpses. Especially in cold weather when they couldn't be buried.
And in summer in No Man's Land. The flies buzzing.'

They rose from Ngea's body in a black cloud.

'It needn't have that effect, though, need it? What about priests
keeping a model of a skull on their desks? Because it reminds them of
their faith.'

Or Njiru. Man he stink, he rotten, bymby he go Sonto. A simple, casual
statement of fact.

'Well, that's the effect it had on me. I'd like to believe. I'd like to
believe in the possibility of -- you're right, it is embarrassing -- 
redemption.'

Silence.

'Anyway,' Rivers said, when it became clear there would be no
more, 'you don't believe that the apparition is the man you killed?
You don't believe it's his ghost?'

'No, though I'm not sure I'd believe that even if I were still a
Christian.'

'So what is it?'


561


THE GHOST ROAD


'A projection of my own mind.'

'Of your guilt?'

'No. Guilt's what I feel sitting here, I don't need an apparition. No,
it's . . .' A deep sigh. 'Guilt as objective fact -- not guilt us feeling. It's
not . . . well, I was going to say it's not subjective, but of course it has
to be, doesn't it?'

'It's the representation to yourself of external standards that you believe to 
be valid?'

'Yes.'

'What language does it speak?'

A blank look. 'Doesn't. Doesn't speak.'

'What language would it speak if it spoke? Yes, I know it's an
irrational question but then the apparition isn't rational either. What
language would --'

'English. Has to be.'

'So why don't you speak to it?'

'It's only there for a second.'

'That's not the way you described it. You said it was endless.'

'All right, it's an endless second.'

'You should be able to say a lot, then.'

'Tell it my life story?'

Rivers said gently, 'It knows your life story.'

Wansbeck was thinking deeply. 'All right. It's bloody mad, but I'll
have a go.'

'What will you say?'

'I have absolutely no idea.'

After Wansbeck had gone, Rivers sat quietly for a few minutes
before adding a note to the file. Sassoon had been much in his mind
while he was speaking to Wansbeck, Sassoon and the apparitions that
gathered round his bed and demanded to know why he was not in
France. Also, another of his patients at Craiglockhart, Harrington,
who'd had dreadful nightmares, even by Craiglockhart standards, and
the nightmares had continued into the semi-waking state, so that they
acquired the character of hypnagogic hallucinations. He saw the severed
head, torso and limbs of a dismembered body hurtling towards him
out of the darkness. A variant of this was a face bending over him, the
lips, nose and eyelids eaten away as if by leprosy. The face, in so far as
it was identifiable at all, was the face of a close friend whom Harrington
had seen blown to pieces. From these dreams he woke either vomiting
or with a wet bed, or both.


562


THE GHOST ROAD


At the time he witnessed his friend's death Harrington had already
been suffering from headaches, split vision, nausea, vomiting, disorder
of micturition, spells of forgetfulness and a persistent gross tremor of
the hands, dating from an explosion two months before in which he'd
been buried alive. Despite these symptoms he had remained on duty
(shoot the MO, thought Rivers) until his friend's death precipitated a
total collapse.

What was interesting about Harrington was that instead of treatment
bringing about an elaboration of the nightmares, so that the horrors
began to assume a more symbolic, less directly representational form the
normal path to recovery -- something rather more remarkable had
happened. His friend's body had begun to reassemble itself. Night after
night the eaten-away features had fleshed out again. And Harrington
talked to him. Long conversations, apparently, or they seemed long to
him on waking, telling his friend about Rivers, about life at Craiglock
hart, about the treatment he was receiving . . .

After several weeks of this, he awoke one day with his memory of
the first hour after the explosion restored. He had, even in his traumatized
state and under heavy fire, crawled round the pieces of his
friend's body collecting items of equipment -- belt, revolver, cap and
lapel badges - to send to the mother. The knowledge that, far from
having fled from the scene, he had behaved with exemplary courage
and loyalty, did a great deal to restore Harrington's self-esteem, for,
like most of the patients at Craiglockhart, he suffered from a deep
sense of shame and failure. From then on the improvement was
dramatic, though still the conversations with the dead friend continued,
until one morning he awoke crying, and realized he was crying,
not only for his own loss but also for his friend's, for the unlived
years.

Wansbeck's predicament was worse than either of these cases. Siegfried's
apparitions vanished as soon as he agreed to give up his protest
and go back to France. The external demands the nocturnal visitors
represented, and which Siegfried himself believed to be valid, had been
met. Harrington had been enormously helped by the discovery that
he'd behaved better than he thought he had. From that moment on,
his recovery had been one of the most dramatic Rivers could recall.
Neither of these outcomes was available to Wansbeck, who'd fought a
perfectly honourable war until one action had made him in his own
eyes -- and in the eyes of the law -- a criminal. Almost everything one
could say to console him either obscenely glossed over the offence or


563


THEGHOSTROAD


1

was in some other way insulting, and would have been instantly recognized
as such by Wansbeck. A lesser man would have borne this better. c

Rivers wondered whether Sassoon and Harrington had been too much in the 
forefront of his mind while he was listening to Wansbeck.
At best, on such occasions, one became a conduit whereby one man's
hard-won experience of self-healing was made available to another. At   f

worst, one no longer listened attentively enough to the individual      4?

voice. There was a real danger, he thought, that in the end the stories y

would become one story, the voices blend into a single cry of pain.     I

And he was tired. Because of the flu epidemic he'd been on duty for     i

thirty of the last forty-eight hours and he was on duty again tonight   »

too. Sighing, he reached for an envelope, took out an X-ray and
clipped it to the screen.

A skull stared out at him. He stood back and looked at it for a ;j|

moment, one lens of his glasses illumined by the lighted screen, the
other reflecting the rainy light of a November afternoon. Then he
reached for the notes.


Second Lieutenant Matthew Halkt, aged twenty, admitted 18 October with
bullet wounds to the head and to the lower jaw. On admission he was
incapable of giving an account of his injuries, and the only information brought
with him was a small card saying he had been wounded on jo September.


So he was now twenty days post-injury.


A rifle bullet had entered just to the left of the inner canthus of the right 
eye
and had made its exit directly above the insertion of the left ear. The wound of
entry was marked by a small perfectly healed scar. The wound of exit consisted
of a large irregular opening in the bone and tissues of the scalp, and through
this protruded a suppurating hernia cerebri which pulsated.


Oh God.


He had so far said nothing spontaneously. When directly addressed he responded,
but his speech was incomprehensible. The wound to his lower jaw
made it difficult to determine whether this represented a deficit in the power 
of
using language, or whether the failure to communicate was entirely or primarily
mechanical. He showed some understanding of speech, however, since he had
responded to simple questions, when asked to do so, by movements of his
unparalysed hand.


Somewhere at the fringe of Rivers's perception was the soft sound
of rain continually falling, seeming to seal the hospital away from the


564


THE GHOST ROAD


darkening afternoon. It had rained incessantly since early morning, the
darkness of the day somehow making it even harder to stay awake. He
took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, and turned to the window, where
each raindrop caught and held a crescent moon of silver light.


'Do you suppose it's ever going to stop?' Hocart said, turning over
restlessly in the gloom of the tent.

It had been raining ever since they'd found Ngea's axe, not restrained
English rain but a downpour, a gurgling splatter that flooded into the
tent no matter how hard they tried to keep it out. Possibly it was
stupid to stay inside at all, though difficult not to when even a five
yard dash into the bush to pee meant you came back with hair plastered
to your skull and a transparent shirt sticking to your chest.

They lay and watched it through the open flap, a solid wall of
water through which the not too distant trees could be glimpsed only
dimly, a wavering blue mass beaten hither and thither by a wind
that blew in sudden spiteful squalls. Hocart, in his frustration, had
been kicking the roof of the tent where it sloped steeply down over
his bed, and his muddy footprints now added to the general squalor
and smell. Hot wet bodies, hair washed daily but only in sea water,
salt drying to a white scurf on the surface of the skin. The only
escape was into the sea, where total immersion relieved the misery of
wet.

On the fourth day the rain eased slightly. Rivers stepped out into
the clearing and saw Njiru coming along the path towards him, for
once without his retinue.

Rivers had been wondering whether to mention the axe, and had
decided not to, but as soon as he looked at Njiru he knew it was
essential to bring it out into the open.

'Blong you?' he said, holding it out.

'Blong Ngea,' Njiru said, and smiled.

But he took it, putting it into the string basket he carried slung over
one shoulder. Rivers heard the chink of one blade on another as it hit
Njiru's axe. It was important to be totally steadfast at this moment,
Rivers thought. He and Hocart were probably the only white men in
the archipelago, apart from the missionaries -- some of the missionaries -- who 
didn't carry guns. They didn't carry knives either, though on
an island covered in dense bush a machete would have been useful.
Nothing that could possibly be mistaken for a weapon. And they
went barefoot, as the natives did. Harmlessness was their defence, not


565


THE GHOST ROAD


guaranteed to succeed by any means, but guns would have made the

job impossible. -       -

Njiru had come, he said, because one of the oldest skull houses on
the island was being rebuilt, and he had to go to say the prayer of
purification over the priest. Would Rivers like to go with him? Of
course, there was no question.

They set off, Njiru remarking at one point that it always rained        ~

when a skull house was being rebuilt because 'tomate he like bathe all
time 'long fresh water'. Soon the narrow path and the steamy heat
made conversation impossible. Rivers watched the movement of muscles
under the oiled skin, wondering, not for the first time, how much
pain Njiru suffered. He was a mystery in many respects and likely to
remain so. He was not married, for example, this among a people to
whom the concept of celibacy was wholly foreign. Was that because
his deformity caused the girls or their parents to regard him as a poor
catch? But then in island terms he was both wealthy and powerful. Did
he himself feel a disinclination for the married state? And what had the
impact been on a small crippled boy of knowing he was the grandson
of Homu, the greatest of the head-hunting chiefs? It was worse, Rivers
thought, smiling to himself, than being the great-nephew of the man     jf

who shot the man who shot Lord Nelson.  »

None of these questions could be pursued. It was not lack of words      f

merely, but a lack of shared concepts. The islanders seemed hardly to
have discovered the idea of personality, in the western sense, much less
to have contracted the habit of introspection. Njiru was one of the
most powerful men on the island, perhaps the most powerful. To
Rivers and Hocart it seemed abundantly apparent that he owed his
position to quite exceptional intelligence, vigour and resolution, but
such qualities were never mentioned by the islanders when they attempted
to explain his position. His power was attributed entirely to
the number of spirits he controlled. He 'knew' Mateana. And above
all, he 'knew' Ave. Njiru knows Ave. One of the first things he'd been
told, though he hadn't understood the significance of the statement
then, and perhaps did not fully understand it even now.

In view of that chink of blade on blade, what accounted for this
sudden change of attitude? He was reasonably certain it was Njiru
who'd put Ngea's axe in the tent. He hadn't even pretended surprise
when Rivers offered it to him. And yet here he was, being apparently
helpful and co-operative, actually inviting him to be present at an
important ritual occasion. But then he was like this, one moment


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clamming up completely, even ordering other people to withhold
information, and yet at other times easily the best informant on the
island. Standing over them sometimes to make sure they got every
detail of a ritual, every word of a prayer exactly right.

The inconsistency probably reflected Njiru's doubts about the reality
of his own power. Others were persuaded by it, but he was capable of
standing back and asking himself the hard questions. Why, if he controlled
the spirits, why, if the rituals did everything he claimed for them,
were the white men still here? Not Rivers and Hocart, whom he
liked and respected, but the others: the government that forbade the
taking of heads though the people lived for it, the traders who cheated
them, the plantation bosses who exploited them, and, most of all, the
missionaries who destroyed their faith. If you can't prevent such things
happening, what is the actual value of your knowledge?

And so he swayed to and fro: sometimes guarding his knowledge
jealously, sometimes sharing it freely, sometimes spitting it out with a
bitter, angry pride, sometimes almost with gratitude to Rivers, whose
obvious interest in what he was being told seemed to confirm its value.
And then again he would sheer off, ashamed of ever needing that
confirmation.

A stormy relationship, then, on Njiru's side, and yet the mutual
respect went deep. He wouldn't kill me, Rivers thought. Then he
thought, Actually, in certain circumstances, that's exactly what he'd
do.

By the time they reached the turning off the coastal path, the sun
was at its highest point. Sweat tickled the tip of Rivers's nose, producing
a constant frenzy of irritation. His groin was a swamp. At first the
darkness under the trees was welcome, after the dreadful white glare,
but then a cloud of stinging insects fastened on the sweat.

Abruptly, they came out into a clearing, sharp blades of sunlight
slanting down between the trees, and ahead of them, rising steeply up
the slope, six or seven skull houses, their gratings ornamented with
strings of dangling shells. The feeling of being watched that skulls
always gave you. Dazzled by the sudden light, he followed Njiru up
the slope, towards a knot of shadows, and then one of the shadows
moved, resolving itself into the shape of Nareti, the blind mortuary
priest who squatted there, all pointed knees and elbows, snails' trails of
pus running from the corners of his eyes.

The furthest of the skull houses was being repaired, and its occupants
had been taken out and arranged on the ground so that, at first sight,


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the clearing seemed to be cobbled with skulls. He hung back, not sure
how close he was permitted to approach, and at that moment a sudden
fierce gust of wind shook the trees and all the strings of votary shells
rattled and clicked together.

Njiru beckoned Rivers to join him and, without further preliminary,
began the prayer of purification, rubbing leaves down
Nareti's legs from buttock to ankle.

'I purify at the great stream of Mondo. It flows down, it flows up, it
washes away the poisonous water of the chiefly dead. The thatch is
poisonous, the rafters are poisonous, the creepers are poisonous, the
ground is poisonous

Among the skulls laid out on the ground were several that had
belonged to children. Children loved and wept over? Or children
brought back from Ysabel and Choiseul and sacrificed?

'Let me purify this priest. Let him come down and pass under. Let
him come down and step over. Let him not waste away, let him not
get the rash, let him not get the itch. Let him be bonito in the sea,
porpoise in the sea, eel in the fresh water, crayfish in the fresh water, vape 
in the fresh water. I purify, I purify, I purify with all the chiefs.'

Njiru's voice, which had risen in pitch, dropped on the final words.

Always in Melanesia, the abrupt transition from ritual to everyday
life. Njiru was soon chatting and laughing with Nareti, then he summoned
Rivers to follow him. A short path led to Nareti's hut and
there, squatting in the dust, having the remains of lunch licked off his
face by a dog, was the small boy whom Lembu had brought from
Ysabel. Healthy, well-fed. Unbruised, Rivers saw, looking closely, not
happy, but then that was hardly to be hoped for. He watched him for a
few minutes. At least the dog was a friend.

He was to assist Nareti, Njiru said. When he grew up he would be a
mortuary priest in his turn. An odd fate, to spend one's life tending the
skulls of a foreign people, but at least he would have a life, and perhaps
not a bad one, for the mortuary priests became wealthy and enjoyed
considerable respect. This taking of captives had been the custom even
in the days of head-hunting, Njiru explained. He was in one of his
communicative phases. Some of the 'heads' taken on a raid were always
brought back alive, and kept for occasions when they might be quickly
needed. A sort of living larder of heads. Such captives were never ill
treated -- the idea of deliberate cruelty was foreign to the people -- and
indeed they often attained positions of wealth and honour, though
always knowing that, at any moment, their heads might be required.


568


THE GHOST ROAD


On their way back across the clearing Njiru stopped, selected the
central skull from the middle row, and held it out to Rivers.

'Homu.'

Rivers took the skull, aware of the immense honour that was being
done to him, and searching for something to say and the words to say
it in. He ran his fingers round the occiput and traced the cranial
sutures. He remembered a time at Bart's, holding a human brain in his
hands for the first time, being amazed at the weight of it. This blown
eggshell had contained the only product of the forces of evolution
capable of understanding its own origins. But then for Njiru too the
skull was sacred not in or of itself, but because it had contained the
spirit, the tomate.

He looked at Njiru and realized it wasn't necessary to say anything.
He handed the skull back, with a slight inclination of his head, and for
a moment their linked hands grasped it, each holding the object of
highest value in the world.


The bullet caused gross damage to the left eye as it passed backwards in the 
direction
of the temporal lobe. Left pupil Jixed, cornea insensitive, eyelid droops, no 
movement
of the globe except downwards. Eye blind because of rupture of the choroid and
atrophy of the optic nerve. Yes. A tendency to clonus at the right ankle joint 
. . . All right.


Switching off the lighted screen and replacing the notes in the file,
Rivers glanced at the cover and noticed that Hallet was in the 2nd
Manchesters. He wondered if he knew Billy Prior, or whether, if he
did, he would remember.


SEVENTEEN


19 October 1918


Marched all day through utter devastation. Dead horses, unburied
men, stench of corruption. Sometimes you look at all this, craters,
stinking mud, stagnant water, trees like gigantic burnt matches, and
you think the land can't possibly recover. It's poisoned. Poison's dripped


569


THE GHOST ROAD


into it from rotting men, dead horses, gas. It will, of course. Fifty years
from now a farmer'll be ploughing these fields and turn up skulls.

A huge crow flew over us, flapping and croaking mournfully. One
for sorrow. The men didn't rest till they'd succeeded in spotting
another.

Joy awaits us, then.    £

The unburied dead, though not cheerful companions for a march,
had one good result. A boot for Wilson. Getting it wasn't pleasant, but
once the debris left by the previous owner (of the previous owner) had
been cleaned out it did well enough. He looks happier.

Men very cheerful for the most part, a long singing column winding
tirelessly along (but we've a long way to go yet!). I found myself
thinking about Longstaffe. Not dead three weeks, and yet he rarely
crosses my mind. In Tite Street, three doors down from Beattie's shop,
there was an old couple who'd been married over fifty years and
everybody thought when one of them went the other would be devas        '<

tated. But when the husband died the old lady didn't seem all that      J

y       ?

upset, and hardly talked about him once the funeral was over. In spite  *' of 
all the young male vigour around here -- and my God it's bloody

overwhelming at times -- we're all in the same position as that old     |

woman. Too close to death ourselves to make a fuss. We economize        **

on grief.       4',


Later


Men bivouac in the open, but the officers are in dug-outs, the remains
of an elaborate German system. The dug-outs are boarded off, but
behind the planks are tunnels which reach back very deep. You can put
your eye to a gap in the boards and look into darkness and after a while
the eyeball begins to ache from the cold air. The extraordinary thing is
everybody's slightly nervous about these tunnels, far more than about
the guns that rumble and flicker and light up the sky as I write. And
it's not a rational fear. It's something to do with the children whom the
Pied Piper led into the mountain, who never came out again, or Rip
Van Winkle who came out and found that years and years had passed
and nobody knew him. It's interesting, well, at least it interests me,
that we're still afraid in this irrational way when at the same time we're
surrounded by the worst the twentieth century can do: shells, revolvers,
rifles, guns, gas. I think it's because it strikes a particular chord. Children


570


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do go into the mountain and not come back. We've all been home on
leave and found home so foreign that we couldn't fit in. What about
after the war? But perhaps it's better not to think about that. Tempting
fate. Anyway, here comes dinner. I'm hungry.


20 October


Another mammoth march. Lousy rotten stinking job too, rounding
up the stragglers. Forget leadership. This is where leadership ends and
bullying starts. I heard myself hassling and chivvying like one of those
bloody instructors at Etaples. Except at least I'm doing what I'm bullying
other people into doing.

I turned on one man, mouth open to give him a really good blast,
and then I saw his face. He was asthmatic. That tight, pale, drawn
worried look. If you're asthmatic yourself you can't miss it. He might
as well have been carrying a placard. I fell in beside him and tried to
talk to him, but he couldn't talk and march at once, or creep rather -- he 
certainly wasn't marching. That's the thing about asthma: it creates
the instant brotherhood shared humanity routinely fails to create. I got
him into the horse ambulance, well propped up, gripped his wrist and
said goodbye. I doubt if he saw me go. When you're as bad as that
nothing matters except the next breath.

The curious thing is as soon as I saw his face, my own chest tightened,
just because I'd been reminded of the possibility, I suppose. So far,
touch wood, there's been no trouble. But I'm a bit wheezy tonight.

Singing very ragged by mid-afternoon, a lot of men marching in
silence, it had become a test of endurance. But then suddenly, or so it
seemed - we'd been marching half asleep - we found ourselves with
green fields on either side, farmhouses with roofs on, trees with
branches, and civilians. We'd marched right through the battlefields
into what used to be securely German-held territory. Women. Children.
Dogs. Cats. I think we were all amazed that the world had such
creatures in it. A-lot of wolf whistling at the girls, and nobody inclined
to be fussy. 'Girl' soon stretched from fourteen to fifty.

I'm writing this at a kitchen table in a cottage. Outside is a farmyard
with ordinary farmyard noises. Honking geese are a miracle. Though
we move on again soon. They're questioning civilians in the next
room, Owen's French coming in handy. And at this table, until a few
weeks ago, a German officer sat and wrote letters home.

*
57i

THE GHOST ROAD


22 October


Still here, but not for much longer. We move on again later today.
Not even the pouring rain that puckers the surface of the pond - with
its official ducks and unofficial moorhens -- can remove the feeling of
serenity I have. Chest a lot easier, in spite of the damp.


24 October


More marching. I have visions of us marching into Berlin at this rate.
Nearest village was shelled last night. Five civilians killed. When did
we stop thinking of civilians as human? Quite a long time ago, I think.
Anyhow, nobody's devastated by the news. And yet the people round
here are friendly, we get on well with them. Only there's a slight
wariness, I suppose. They hated the invasion, nobody doubts that, but
the Germans were here a long time. An accommodation of some sort
was reached. And the German troops in this area anyway seem to have
been very disciplined. No atrocities. The respectable young ladies of
the village are very respectable young ladies indeed, despite having
spent four years in the clutches of the brutal and lascivious Hun. And
the shell-holes that lie in the orchards, fields and roads round here great
gaping wounds -- were made by our guns. The bombardment
was very heavy at times. Some of the children run away from us. And
yet we're greeted everywhere with open arms.

Still can't get used to ordinary noises, especially women's and children's
voices. It must feel like this coming out of prison.


25 October


Owen is to be court-martialled. Mainly because he speaks French better
than anybody else and all the local girls make a bee-line for him, not
just thanking him either, but actually kissing him. I caught his eye
while all this was going on, and thought I detected an answering
gleam. Of irony or whatever. Anyway the Great Unkissed are
thoroughly fed up with him and have convened a subalterns' court
martial. Shot at dawn, I shouldn't wonder.

Wyatt, meanwhile, is visiting a farmhouse on the outskirts of
the village where lives an accommodating widow and her equally


572


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accommodating but rather more nubile daughters. At this very
moment, probably, he's dipping his wick where many a German wick
has dipped before it. (A frisson wasted on Wyatt, believe me.)
But this morning I saw a woman in the village with sunlight on her
hair and one of those long loaves of bread in her arms and there was
more sensuality in that moment than in all Wyatt's humping and
pumping. Out of bounds, of course. Perfectly respectable housewife
doing the shopping.


26 October


This morning I went to one of the local farms to sort out a billeting
problem. The woman who runs the farm had accused some of the men
in 'C' company of stealing eggs. They denied it vociferously, but I'm
sure she's right. After calming her down and paying her more for the
eggs than they were worth, I noticed a boy with red hair staring at me.
Not staring exactly, but his eyes met mine longer than was strictly
necessary. About sixteen, I suppose. Perhaps a bit older. He was walking
across the yard clanking a bucket of pig swill, and after I'd taken leave
of Madame (his mother, I think) I followed him into the fetid darkness,
full of snuffling and munching, pigs rooting round with moist quivering
nostrils, trotting towards him on delicate pink feet. After he poured
the swill in they squealed and guzzled for a bit, then raised their heads,
watching us calmly from under long fine white eyelashes as they
munched. I scratched their backs and tried to talk to him. Chinks
of sunlight came in through gaps in the tiles, a smelly greenish wetness
under foot. He spoke rapidly and I got very little of it - schoolboy
French no use at all. I spun back-scratching out as long as I
could, then departed, wondering how much of that initial look I'd
imagined.

Nothing particularly attractive about him - dead white skin, splodgy
freckles, curious flat golden brown eyes -- not that it bothered me.
After two months without sex I'd have settled for the pigs.

I met him again later, near the church. There's a lane runs past the
churchyard, a low stone wall on one side, a canal on the other, one of
the many canals that run through this area. A rather dank gloomy
stretch of water, listlessly reflecting a dense white sky, fringed by
willows with limp yellow leaves. He was sitting with his big, red, raw
knuckled hands clasped between his knees. The red hair glowed in the


573


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greyish light, not bright red, not auburn, a dark, flat, burnt-looking
colour.

He was very obviously lingering. He greeted me with a smile and
tapped his mouth, making smoking movements. I gave him a Woodbine
and stood by the canal, a few feet away, looking up and down to
make sure we weren't being observed. He made smoking movements
again and pointed to the packet. When I didn't immediately respond,
he pointed again and said something in German. I thought, My God.
Have you really got your head stuck so deep in the fucking pig bucket
you don't know which army's up the other end? I suppose it should
have disgusted me, but it didn't. In fact it had the opposite effect - I'd
have given him every packet I possessed. I handed them over and he
got up and led me into the trees. It took a while finding somewhere
sufficiently screened. I showed him what I wanted. He leant against the
tree trunk, bracing himself on his hands. I pulled down his trousers and
drawers and started nosing and tonguing round his arse, worrying at
the crack to get in because the position hardened the muscles. A smell
of chrysanths left too long in water, then a deeper friendlier smell,
prim, pursed hole glistening with spit and, on the other side of that
tight French sphincter, German spunk. Not literally -- they left a bit
longer ago than that - but there nevertheless, the shadowy figures one
used to glimpse through periscopes in the trenches, and my tongue
reaching out for them. I thought,


Oh ye millions I embrace you,
This kiss is for the whole world . . .


Suddenly it struck me as funny, and my breath made a farting noise
between his buttocks and he tried to pull away, but I held on, and
fucked him, and then turned him round and sucked off his quite small
stubby very purple cock.

And then we parted. And I've been neurotically running my tongue
round my lips feeling for sores ever since.


27 October


Everybody finds these marches gruelling. I spend a lot of my time on
foot inspections. Some of the men have blisters the size of eggs. And
my own feet, which were not good this morning, are now very not
good.


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But we're in decent billets tonight. I've actually got a bed in a room
with roses on the wallpaper, and a few left in the garden too. Went out
and picked some and put them in a bowl on the kitchen table in
memory of Amiens. Big blowsy roses well past their best, but we
move on again today so I won't be here to see the petals fall.


29 October


Arrived here under cover of darkness. Village wretched, people unsmiling,
dazed-looking, not surprising when you think we were bombing
them to buggery not long ago.

There's a rumour going round that the Austrians have signed a
peace treaty. The men cheered up when they heard it, and they need
cheering when you look at their feet. Nobody here can understand
why it's still going on.

I lay in bed last night and listened to them in the barn singing. I wish
I didn't feel they're being sacrificed to the subclauses and the small
print. But I think they are.


Thursday, 31 October


And here for a while we shall stay. The Germans are dug in on the
other side of the Sambre-Oise Canal, and seem to be preparing to
make a stand.

The village is still occupied, but houses in the forward area have
been evacuated and we're crammed into the cellar of one of them.
Now and then we venture upstairs into the furnished rooms, feeling
like rats or mice, and then we scurry back into our hole again. But it's
warm, it feels safe, though the whole house shakes with the impact of
exploding shells, and it's not good to think what a direct hit would do.
Above ground the Germans have chopped down all the trees, but
there's a great tangle of undergrowth, brambles that catch at your legs
as you walk past, dead bracken the exact shade, or one of the shades, of
Sarah's hair. No possibility of exercises or drill or anything. We lie low
by day, and patrol at night, for of course they've left alarm posts on
this side of the canal, a sort of human trip-wire to warn of an impending
attack. Cleaning them out's a nasty job since it has to be silent. Knives
and knobkerries in other words.


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7 November


My turn to go out last night. One alarm post 'exterminated'. I hope it's
the last. We crawled almost to the edge of the canal, and lay looking at it. 
There was just enough starlight to see by. A strong sense of the
Germans on the other side, peering into the darkness as we were, silent,
watchful. I had the sense that somewhere out there was a pair of eyes
looking directly into mine.

The canal's raised about four feet above the surrounding fields, with
drainage ditches on either side (the Germans have very sensibly flooded
them). It's forty feet wide. Too wide to be easily bridged, too narrow
from the point of view of a successful bombardment. There's no safety
margin to allow for shells falling short, so men and equipment will
have to be kept quite a long way back. Which means that when the
barrage lifts, as it's supposed to do, and sweeps forward three hundred
yards, there'll be about five minutes in which to get across the swampy
fields, across the drainage ditches, and reach even our side of the canal.
Plenty of time for them to get their breath and man the guns -- though
officially, of course, they'll all have been wiped out.

The field opposite's partially flooded already, and it's still raining.
Not just rain, they've also flooded the drainage ditches on their side.
From the canal the ground rises steeply to La Motte Farm, which is our
objective in the attack. Uphill all the way. Not a scrap of cover.
Machine-gunners behind every clump of grass.

Looking at the ground, even like that in semi-darkness, the problem
became dreadfully apparent. Far clearer than it is on any of the maps,
though we spend hours of every day bent over them. There are two
possibilities. Either you bombard the opposite bank so heavily that no
machine-gunner can possibly survive, in which case the ditches and
quite possibly even the canal bank will burst, and the field on the other
side will become a nightmare of weltering mud ten feet deep, as bad as
anything at Passchendaele. Or you keep the bombardment light, move
it on quickly, and wait for the infantry to catch up. In that case you
take the risk that unscathed machine-gunners will pop up all over the
place, and settle down for a nice bit of concentrated target practice.

It's a choice between Passchendaele and the Somme. Only a miniature version of 
each, but then that's not much consolation. It only takes one
bullet per man.

They've chosen the Somme. This afternoon we had a joint briefing
with the Lancashire Fusiliers on our left. MarshalloftheTen-Wounds


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THE GHOST ROAD


was there, surprisingly outspoken I thought, though you can afford to
be when you're so covered in wound stripes and medals it's starting to
look like an eccentric form of camouflage. He said his men stand no chance of 
getting up the slope with machine-guns still intact above
them and no cover. Building a bridge in the open under the sort of fire
we're likely to encounter is impossible. The whole operation's insane. The 
chances of success are zero.

Nobody argued with him, I mean nobody discussed it. We were
just told flatly, a simple, unsupported assertion, that the weight of the
artillery would overcome all opposition. I think those words sent a
chill down the spine of every man there who remembered the Somme.
Marshall threw his pencil down and sat with his arms folded, silent, for
the rest of the briefing.

So here we sit writing letters. Supplies take a long time to get here,
because the Germans blocked the roads and blew up the bridges as they
withdrew. Nobody's been inside a proper shop for six weeks, so I keep
tearing pages out of the back of this book and giving them to people.

Not many left now. But enough.


2 November 1918 2nd Manchester Regt. France


My dear Rivers,

As you'll have realized from my last letter, I'm still intact. Should
this happy state of affairs not continue, I would be grateful if you
would try to see my mother. She took quite a fancy to you when
you met last year at Craiglockhart and you, more than most people,
would know what to say. Or have the sense to say nothing, which
was always rather your forte, wasn't it?

My nerves are in perfect working order. By which I mean that in
my present situation the only sane thing to do is to run away, and I
will not do it. Test passed?


Yours
Billy Prior


A chilly little note to send to someone who's done so much for me.
Wrong tone completely, but there isn't time to get it right.
I daren't think about Sarah.


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3 November


We're packed so tight in this cellar my elbow's constantly being jogged
by people on either side. Cigarette smoke stings my eyes, I honestly
believe if you ran out of fags here you'd just need to breathe deeply.
But I've got enough to last, even after my spasm of generosity on the
canal bank. Which this morning I reread, tore out and burned. Another
canal bank meeting awaits -- but this time the sort people approve of.

Curious day -- it seems to have gone on for ever. We had another
briefing at a farmhouse further along the lane. We were greeted by a
little yapping terrier, still a puppy, black and white and full of himself,
tucking one of his legs up as he ran so that at first I thought he
was crippled, but the children in the house said no, he always runs
like that. He quietened down a bit, but then got excited and started
yapping again. Winterton nodded at me, and said, 'We can't have
that.'

I shot it myself. I'm proud of that. In the trenches sometimes you'd
be watching through a periscope and you'd see a German soldier generally
well back in the support lines -- walking along believing
himself to be safe, and he'd drop his breeches and settle down for a nice
contented crap. You don't want to shoot him because there's something
about the vulnerability of that bare arse, you feel the draught up your
own crack, a moment of basic human empathy. So you point him out
to the sentry and order the sentry to shoot him. That lets everybody
off the hook -- you haven't shot him, the sentry has, but only under
orders.

But I shot the dog myself. I took him into the barn holding on to his
collar. He knew something bad was going to happen, and he rolled
over on to his back and showed me his puppy-pink tummy and widdled
a bit, quite certain these devices for deflecting aggression would work.
I tickled him behind his ear and said, 'Sorry, old son. I'm human -- we're not 
like that.'

And I'm glad of the fug of human warmth in here, and not just
because it keeps out the wind and rain. Those who've bagged themselves
seats by the fire have steam rising from their boots and puttees.
The rest of us just wiggle our toes and make do.

Having said I daren't think about Sarah, I think about her all the
time. I remember the first time we met -- that ludicrous wrestling
match on a tombstone which in retrospect seems a rather appropriate
start for a relationship so hedged in by death. And before that in the


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pub, plying her with port to get her knickers off, and she wanted to
talk about Johnny's death and I didn't want to listen. Loos, she said. I
remember standing by the bar and thinking that words didn't mean
anything any more. Patriotism honour courage vomit vomit vomit.
Only the names meant anything. Mons, Loos, the Somme, Arras,
Verdun, Ypres.

But now I look round this cellar with the candles burning on the
tables and our linked shadows leaping on the walls, and I realize there's
another group of words that still mean something. Little words that
trip through sentences unregarded: us, them, we, they, here, there.
These are the words of power, and long after we're gone, they'll lie
about in the language, like the uncxploded grenades in these fields, and
any one of them'll take your hand off.

Wyatt sleeps like a baby, except that no baby ever snored like that.
Hoggart's peeling potatoes. Mugs of chlorine-tasting tea stand round.
And somebody's chopping wood and feeding it to the fire, though it's
so damp every fresh stick produces darkness, sizzling, a temporary
shadowing of faces and eyes and then the flames lick round it, and the
fire blazes up again. We need a good fire. Everybody's coughing and
wheezing, a nasty cold going the rounds. I'm starting to feel a tickle in
my throat, hot and shivery at the same time. I think of rats on the canal
bank with long naked tails and the thought of that cold water is
definitely not inviting. But we sing, we tell jokes and every joke told
here is funny. Everybody's amazingly cheerful. The word I'm trying
not to use is fey. There is an element of that. We all know what the
chances are.

And soon I shall turf Wyatt out of that bunk and try to get some
sleep.

Five months ago Charles Manning offered me a job at the Ministry
of Munitions and I turned it down, and said if I was sent back to France
. . . 'If if if if -- I shall sit in a dug-out and look back to this afternoon,
and I shall think, "You bloody fool."'

I remember sitting on the stiff brocade sofa in his drawing-room as I
said it.

Well, here I am, in what passes for a dug-out. And I look round me
at all these faces and all I can think is: What an utter bloody fool I
would have been not to come back.


579


THE GHOST ROAD


EIGHTEEN


Brown fog enveloped the hospital. Coils of sulphurous vapour hung in
the entrance hall, static, whirled into different patterns whenever somebody
entered or left the building. He'd gone out himself earlier in the
evening to buy a paper from the stand outside Victoria Station, a brisk
ten-minute walk there and back, a chance to get some air into his
lungs, though air these days scorched the throat. The news was good.
At any moment now, one felt, the guns would stop and they would all
be released into their private lives. They all felt it -- and yet it almost
seemed not to matter. The end that everybody had longed for was
overshadowed by the Spanish influenza epidemic that had the hospital
in its grip. If somebody had rushed along the corridor now opening
doors and shouting, 'The war's over,' he'd have said, 'Oh, really?' and
gone back to writing up notes.

He looked at his watch and stood up. Time to go up to the ward.

Marsden was trying to catch his eye. He'd had the impression that
morning, during his ward round, that Marsden wanted to ask something,
but had been deterred by the formality of the occasion. Rivers
had a quick word with Sister Roberts - the staffing situation for this
duty was particularly bad -- and then went and sat by Marsden's bed,
chatting about this and that while he worked himself up to say whatever
it was he wanted to say. It was quite simple. He'd overheard a junior
doctor talking to a colleague at the foot of his bed and had caught the
phrase 'elicited the coital reflex'. Did this mean, Marsden wanted to
know, that he would eventually, he stressed, hedging his bets, not now 
obviously, eventually, be able to have sex again? 'Have sex' was produced in a 
flat, no nonsense, all-chaps-together tone. He meant 'make
love'. He meant 'have children'. His wife's photograph stood on his
locker. Rivers's neck muscles tensed with the effort of not looking at
it. No, he said slowly, it didn't mean that. He explained what it meant.
Marsden wasn't listening, but he needed a smoke-screen of words
behind which to prepare his reaction. He was pleating the hem of the
sheet between his fingertips. 'Well,' he said casually, when Rivers had
finished. 'I didn't really think it meant that. Just thought I'd ask.'

One incident; one day.


Faces shadowed by steel helmets, they would hardly have recognized


580


THE GHOST ROAD


each other, even it the faint starlight had enabled them to see clearly.
Prior, crouching in a ditch beside the crossroads, kept looking at the
inside of his left wrist where normally his watch would have been. It
had been taken away from him twenty minutes ago to be synchronized.
The usual symptoms: dry mouth, sweaty palms, pounding heart, irritable
bladder, cold feet. What a brutally accurate term 'cold feet' was.
Though 'shitting yourself - the other brutally accurate term - did not apply. 
He'd been glugging Tincture of Opium all day, as had
several others of the old hands. He'd be shitting bricks for a fortnight
when this was over, but at least he wouldn't be shitting himself
tonight.

He looked again at his wrist, caught Owen doing the same, smiled
with shared irritation, said nothing. He stared at the stars, trying to
locate the plough, but couldn't concentrate. Rain clouds were massing.
All we need. A few minutes later a runner came back with his watch
and with a tremendous sense - delusional, of course - of being in
control again he strapped it on.

Then they were moving forward, hundreds of men eerily quiet,
starlit shadows barely darkening the grass. And no dogs barked.


The clock at the end of the ward blurred, then moved into focus again.
He was finding it difficult to keep awake now that the rounds were
done, the reports written and his task was simply to be there, ready for
whatever emergencies the night might throw his way. Sister Roberts
put a mug of orange-coloured tea, syrupy with sugar, in front of him,
and he took a gulp. They sat together at the night nurses' station there
were no night nurses, they were all off with flu -- drinking the
too strong, too sweet tea, watching the other end of the ward, where
the green screens had been placed round Hallet's bed. A single lamp
shone above his bed so the green curtains glowed against the darkness
of the rest of the ward. Through a gap between the screens Rivers
could see one of the family, a young boy, fourteen, fifteen years old
perhaps, Hallet's younger brother, wriggling about on his chair, bored
with the long hours of waiting and knowing it was unforgivable to be
bored.

'I wish the mother would go home and lie down,' Sister Roberts
said. 'She's absolutely at the end of her tether.' A sniff. 'And that girl
looks the hysterical type to me.'

She never liked the girls. 'Is she his sister?'

'Fiancee.'


581


THE GHOST ROAD


A muttering from behind the screen, but no discernible words.
Rivers stood up. 'I'd better have a look.'

'Do you want the relatives out?'

'Please. It'll only take a minute.'

The family looked up as he pushed the screens aside. They had been
sitting round this bed off and on for nearly thirty-six hours, ever since
Hallet's condition had begun to deteriorate. Mrs Hallet, the mother,
was on Hallet's right, he suspected because the family had decided she
should be spared, as far as possible, seeing the left side of Hallet's face.
The worst was hidden by the dressing over the eye, but still enough
was visible. The father sat on the bad side, a middle-aged man, very
erect, retired professional army, in uniform for the duration of the
war. He had a way of straightening his shoulders, bracing himself that
suggested chronic back pain rather than a reaction to the present
situation. And then the girl, whose name was . . . Susan, was it? She
sat, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers, often with a polite,
meaningless smile on her face, in the middle of the family she had
been going to join and must now surely realize she would not be joining.
And the boy, who was almost the most touching of all, gauche,
graceless, angry with everything, his voice sometimes squeaking
humiliatingly so that he blushed, at other times braying down the
ward, difficult, rebellious, demanding attention, because he was afraid
if he stopped behaving like this he would cry.

They stood up when he came in, looking at him in a way familiar
from his earliest days in hospital medicine. They expected him to do something. 
Although they'd been told Hallet was critically ill, they
were still hoping he'd 'make him better'.

Sister Roberts asked them to wait outside and they retreated to the
waiting-room at the end of the main corridor.

He looked at Hallet. The whole of the left side of his face drooped.
The exposed eye was sunk deep in his skull, open, though he didn't
seem to be fully conscious. His hair had been shaved off, preparatory
to whatever operation had left the horseshoe-shaped scar, now healing
ironically well, above the suppurating wound left by the rifle bullet.
The hernia cerebri pulsated, looking like some strange submarine form
of life, the mouth of a sea anemone perhaps. The whole of the left side
of his body was useless. Even when he was conscious enough to speak
the drooping of the mouth and the damage to the lower jaw made his
speech impossible to follow. This, more than anything else, horrified
his family. You saw them straining to understand, but they couldn't


582


THE GHOST ROAD


grasp a word he said. His voice came in a whisper because he lacked
the strength to project it. He seemed to be whispering now. Rivers
bent over him, listened, then straightened up, deciding he must have
imagined the sound. Hallet had not stirred, beyond the usual twitching
below the coverlet, the constant clonus to which his right ankle joint
was subject.

Why are you alive? Rivers thought, looking down into the gar
goyled face.

Mate, would have been Njiru's word for this: the state of which
death is the appropriate and therefore the desirable outcome. He would
have seen Hallet as being, in every meaningful way, dead already, and
his sole purpose would have been to hasten the moment of actual
death: mate ndapu, die finish. Rivers fingered his lapel badge, his unimpaired
nerves transmitting the shape of the caduceus to his undamaged
brain, his allegiance to a different set of beliefs confirmed without the
conflict ever breaking the surface of consciousness.

He took Hallet's pulse. 'All right,' he said to Sister Roberts. 'You
can let them back in.'

He watched her walk off, then thought it was cowardice not to face
them, and followed her down the corridor, passing Mrs Hallet on the
way. She hesitated when she saw him, but the drive to get back to her
son was too strong. Susan and the younger brother followed on behind.
He found Major Hallet lingering by an open window, smoking furiously.
A breath of muggy, damp, foggy air came into the room, a
reminder that there was an outside world.

'Pathetic, isn't it?' Major Hallet said, raising the cigarette. 'Well?'

Rivers hesitated.

'Not long now, eh?'

'No, not long.'

In spite of his terseness, tears immediately welled up in Major Hallet's
eyes. He turned away, his voice shaking. 'He's been so brave. He's
been so bloody brave.' A moment during which he struggled for
control. 'How long exactly do you think?'

'I don't know-. Hours.'

'Oh God.'

'Keep talking to him. He does recognize your voices and he can
understand.'

'But we can't understand him. It's terrible, he's obviously expecting
an answer and we can't say anything.'

They went back to the ward together, Major Hallet pausing outside


583


THE GHOST ROAD


the screen for a moment, bracing his back. A muttering from the bed.
'You see?' Major Hallet said helplessly.

Rivers followed him through the gap in the screens and leant over
to listen to Hallet. His voice was a slurred whisper. 'Shotvarfet.'

At first Rivers could only be sure of the initial consonant and thought
he might be trying to say 'Susan', but the phrase was longer than that.
He straightened and shook his head. 'Keep talking to him, Mrs Hallet.
He does recognize your voice.'

She bent forward and shyly, covered with the social embarrassment
that crops up so agonizingly on these occasions, tried to talk, telling him 
news of home, Auntie Ethel sent her love, Madeleine was getting
married in April . . .

Susan had that smile on her lips again, fixed, meaningless, a baboon
rictus of sheer terror. And the boy's face, a mask of fear and fury
because he knew that any moment now the tears would start, and he'd
be shamed in front of some merciless tribunal in his own mind.

Rivers left them to it. Sister Roberts and the one orderly were busy
with Adams who had to be turned every hour. He sat in the night
station's circle of light, looking up and down the ward, forcing himself
to name and recall the details of every patient, his tired mind waiting
for the next jerk of the clock.

The glowing green screens round Hallet's bed reminded him of the
tent on Eddystone, on the nights when the insects were really bad and
they had to take the lamp inside. You'd go out into the bush and come
back and there'd be this great glow of light, and Hocart's shadow huge
on the canvas. Safety, or as close to it as you could get on the edge of
the dark.


On their last evening he sat outside the tent, packing cases full of
clothes and equipment ranged around him, typing up his final notes.
Hocart was away on the other side of the island and not due back for
hours. Working so close to the light his eyes grew tired, and he sat
back rubbing the inner corners; he opened them again to find Njiru a
few feet away watching him, having approached silently on his bare
feet.

Rivers took the lamp from the table and set it on the ground,
squatting down beside it, since he knew Njiru was more comfortable
on the ground. The bush exuded blackness. The big moths that loved a
particular flowering bush that grew all round the tent bumped furrily
against the glass, so that he and Njiru sat in a cloud of pale wings.


584


THE GHOST ROAD


They chatted for a while about some of the more than four hundred
acquaintances they now had in common, then a long easy silence
fell.

'Kundaite says you know Ave,' Rivers said very quietly, almost as if
the bush itself had spoken, and Njiru were being asked to do no more
than think aloud.

Njiru said, almost exactly as he'd said at the beginning, 'Kundaite
he no speak true, he savvy gammon 'long nanasa,' but now he spoke
with a faint growl of laughter in his voice, adding in English, 'He is a
liar.'

'He is a liar, but I think you do know Ave.'

He was reminded suddenly of an incident in the Torres Straits when
Haddon had been trying to get skulls to measure. One man had said, with immense 
dignity, 'Be patient. You will have all our skulls in
time.' It was not a comfortable memory. He was not asking for skulls
but he was asking for something at least equally sacred. He leant
forward and their shadows leapt and grappled against the bush. 'Tell
me about Ave.'

Ave lives in Ysabel. He is both one spirit and many spirits. His
mouth is long and filled with the blood of the men he devours. Kita
and Mateana are nothing beside him because they destroy only the
individual, but Ave kills 'all people 'long house'. The broken rainbow
belongs to him, and presages both epidemic disease and war. Ave is the
destroyer of peoples.

And the words of exorcism? He told him even that, the last bubbles
rising from the mouth of a drowning man. Not only told him, but,
with that blend of scholarly exactitude and intellectual impatience for
which he was remarkable, insisted on Rivers learning the words in
Melanesian, in the 'high speech', until he had the inflection on every
syllable perfect. This was the basis, Rivers thought, toiling and stumbling
over the words, of Njiru's power, the reason why on meeting
him even the greatest chiefs stepped off the path.

'And now,' Njiru said, lifting his head in a mixture of pride and
contempt, 'now you will put it in your book.'


I never have, Rivers thought. His and Hocart's book on Eddystone
had been one of the casualties of the war, though hardly -- he glanced
up and down the ward with its rows of brain-damaged and paralysed
young men -- the most significant.

He had spoken them, though, during the course of a lecture to the


585


THE GHOST ROAD


Royal Society, and had been delighted to find that he didn't need to
consult his notes as he spoke. He was still word-perfect.

A commotion from behind the screens. Hallet had begun to cry out
and his family was trying to soothe him. A muttering all along the
ward as the other patients stirred and grumbled in their sleep, dragged
reluctantly back into consciousness. But the grumbling stopped as they
realized where the cries were coming from. A silence fell. Faces turned
towards the screens as if the battle being waged behind them was every
man's battle.

Rivers walked quietly across. The family stood up again as he came
in. 'No, it's all right,' he said. 'No need to move.'

He took Hallet's pulse. He felt the parents' gaze on him, the father's
red-veined, unblinking eyes and the mother's pale fierce face with its
working mouth.

'This is it, isn't it?' Major Hallet said in a whisper.

Rivers looked down at Hallet, who was now fully conscious. Oh
God, he thought, it's going to be one of those. He shook his head. 'Not
long.'


The barrage was due to start in fifteen minutes' time. Prior shared a bar
of chocolate with Robson, sitting hunched up together against the
damp cold mist. Then they started crawling forward. The sappers,
who were burdened by materials for the construction of the pontoon
bridge, were taking the lane, so the Manchesters had to advance over
the waterlogged fields. The rain had stopped, but the already marshy
ground had flooded in places, and over each stretch of water lay a thick
blanket of mist. Concentrate on nothing but the moment, Prior told
himself, moving forward on knees and elbows like a frog or a lizard or
like -- like anything except a man. First the right knee, then the left,
then the right, then the left again, and again, and again, slithering
through fleshy green grass that smelled incredibly sharp as scrabbling
boots cut it. Even with all this mist there was now a perceptible
thinning of the light, a gleam from the canal where it ran between
spindly, dead trees.

There is to be no retirement under any circumstances. That was the order.
They have tied us to the stake, we cannot fly, but bear-like we must
fight the course. The men were silent, staring straight ahead into the
mist. Talk, even in whispers, was forbidden. Prior looked at his watch,
licked dry lips, watched the second hand crawl to the quarter hour.
All around him was a tension of held breath. 5.43. Two more minutes.


586


THE GHOST ROAD


He crouched further down, whistle clenched between his teeth.

Prompt as ever, hell erupted. Shells whined over, flashes of light,
plumes of water from the drainage ditches, tons of mud and earth
flung into the air. A shell fell short. The ground shook beneath them
and a shower of pebbles and clods of earth peppered their steel helmets.
Five minutes of this, five minutes of the air bursting in waves against
your face, men with dazed faces braced against it, as they picked up the
light bridges meant for fording the flooded drainage ditches, and carried
them out to the front. Then, abruptly, silence. A gasp for air, then
noise again, but further back, as the barrage lifted and drummed down
on to the empty fields.

Prior blew the whistle, couldn't hear it, was on his feet and running
anyway, urging the men on with wordless cries. They rushed forward,
making for the line of trees. Prior kept shouting, 'Steady, steady! Not
too fast on the left!' It was important there should be no bunching
when they reached the bridges. 'Keep it straight!' Though the men
were stumbling into quagmires or tripping over clumps of grass. A
shell whizzing over from the German side exploded in a shower of
mud and water. And another. He saw several little figures topple over,
it didn't look serious, somehow, they didn't look like beings who
could be hurt.

Bridges laid down, quickly, efficiently, no bunching at the crossings,
just the clump of boots on wood, and then they emerged from beneath
the shelter of the trees and out into the terrifying openness of the bank.
As bare as an eyeball, no cover anywhere, and the machine-gunners on
the other side were alive and well. They dropped down, firing to
cover the sappers as they struggled to assemble the bridge, but nothing
covered them. Bullets fell like rain, puckering the surface of the canal,
and the men started to fall. Prior saw the man next to him, a silent,
surprised face, no sound, as he twirled and fell, a slash of scarlet like a
huge flower bursting open on his chest. Crawling forward, he fired at
the bank opposite though he could hardly see it for the clouds of
smoke that drifted across. The sappers were still struggling with the
bridge, binding pontoon sections together with wire that sparked in
their hands as bullets struck it. And still the terrible rain fell. Only two
sappers left, and then the Manchesters took over the building of the
bridge. Kirk paddled out in a crate to give covering fire, was hit, hit
again, this time in the face, went on firing directly at the machine
gunners who crouched in their defended holes only a few yards away.
Prior was about to start across the water with ammunition when he


587


THE GHOST ROAD


was himself hit, though it didn't feel like a bullet, more like a blow
from something big and hard, a truncheon or a cricket bat, only it
knocked him off his feet and he fell, one arm trailing over the edge of
the canal.

He tried to turn to crawl back beyond the drainage ditches, knowing
it was only a matter of time before he was hit again, but the gas was
thick here and he couldn't reach his mask. Banal, simple, repetitive
thoughts ran round and round his mind. Balls up. Bloody mad. Oh
Christ. There was no pain, more a spreading numbness that left his
brain clear. He saw Kirk die. He saw Owen die, his body lifted off the
ground by bullets, describing a slow arc in the air as it fell. It seemed to
take for ever to fall, and Prior's consciousness fluttered down with it.
He gazed at his reflection in the water, which broke and reformed and
broke again as bullets hit the surface and then, gradually, as the numbness
spread, he ceased to see it.


The light was growing now, the subdued, brownish light of a November
dawn. At the far end of the ward, Simpson, too far gone himself to
have any understanding of what was happening, jargoned and gobbled
away, but all the other faces were turned towards the screens, each
man lending the little strength he had to support Hallet in his struggle.

So far, except for the twice repeated whisper and the wordless cries,
Hallet had been silent, but now the whisper began again, only more
loudly. Shotvarfet. Shotvarfet. Again and again, increasing in volume as
he directed all his strength into the cry. His mother tried to soothe
him, but he didn't hear her. Shotvarfet. Shotvarfet. Again and again,
each time louder, ringing across the ward. He opened his one eye and
gazed directly at Rivers, who had come from behind the screens and
was standing at the foot of his bed.

'What's he saying?' Major Hallet asked.

Rivers opened his mouth to say he didn't know and then realized he
did. 'He's saying, "It's not worth it."'

'Oh, it is worth it, it is,' Major Hallet said, gripping his son's hand.
The man was in agony. He hardly knew what he was saying.

'Shotvarfet.'

The cry rose again as if he hadn't spoken, and now the other patients
were growing restless. A buzz of protest not against the cry, but in
support of it, a wordless murmur from damaged brains and drooping
mouths.

'Shotvarfet. Shotvarfet.'


588


THE GHOST ROAD


'I can't stand much more of this,' Major Hallet said. The mother's
eyes never left her son's face. Her lips were moving though she made
no sound. Rivers was aware of a pressure building in his own throat as
that single cry from the patients went on and on. He could not afterwards
be sure that he had succeeded in keeping silent, or whether he
too had joined in. All he could remember later was gripping the metal
rail at the end of the bed till his hands hurt.

And then suddenly it was over. The mangled words faded into
silence, and a moment or two later, with an odd movement of the
chest and stomach muscles like somebody taking off a too tight jumper,
Hallet died.

Rivers reached the bedside before the family realized he was gone,
closed the one eye, and from sheer force of habit looked at his watch.

'6.25,' he said, addressing Sister Roberts.

He raised the sheet as far as Hallet's chin, arranged his arms by his
sides and withdrew silently, leaving the family alone with their grief,
wishing, as he pulled the screens more closely together, that he had not
seen the young girl turn aside to hide her expression of relief.


On the edge of the canal the Manchesters lie, eyes still open, limbs not
yet decently arranged, for the stretcher-bearers have departed with the
last of the wounded, and the dead are left alone. The battle has withdrawn
from them; the bridge they succeeded in building was destroyed
by a single shell. Further down the canal another and more successful
crossing is being attempted, but the cries and shouts come faintly here.
The sun has risen. The first shaft strikes the water and creeps towards
them along the bank, discovering here the back of a hand, there the
side of a neck, lending a rosy glow to skin from which the blood has
fled, and then, finding nothing here that can respond to it, the shaft of
light passes over them and begins to probe the distant fields.


Grey light tinged with rosy pink seeps in through the tall windows.
Rivers, slumped at the night nurses' station, struggles to stay awake.
On the edge of sleep he hears Njiru's voice, repeating the words of the
exorcism of Ave.

O Sumbi! O Gesese! O Palapoko! O Gorepoko! O you Ngengere at the
root of the sky. Go down, depart ye.

And there, suddenly, not separate from the ward, not in any way
ghostly, not in fashion blong tomate, but himself in every particular,
advancing down the ward of the Empire Hospital, attended by his


589


THE GHOST ROAD


shadowy retinue, as Rivers had so often seen him on the coastal path
on Eddystone, came Njiru.

There is an end of men, an end of chiefs, an end of chieftains' wives, an end
of chiefs' children -- then go down and depart. Do not yearn for us, the
fingerless, the crippled, the broken. Go down and depart, oh, oh, oh.

He bent over Rivers, staring into his face with those piercing hooded
eyes. A long moment, and then the brown face, with its streaks of
lime, faded into the light of the daytime ward.


590


author's note


The reader may wish to know more about some of the historical
characters encountered in this novel.

Colonel Marshall-of-the-Ten-Wounds was killed attempting to
cross the Sambre-Oise canal, having led his men 'without regard for
his personal safety'. He was awarded a posthumous VC.

James Kirk, who paddled himself out on to the canal to give covering
fire, was also awarded a posthumous VC.

Wilfred Owen's ME, for gallantry in capturing an enemy machine
gun and inflicting 'considerable losses' on the enemy at the battle of
Joncourt, was awarded after his death.

Rivers drew on his Eddystone data in several published papers, but
the major joint work he and Hocart planned was never written. His
notebooks are in the Rare Manuscripts Department of Cambridge
University Library.

Njiru, Kundaite, Namboko Taru, Namboko Emele, Nareti, Lembu
and the captive child are also historical, but of them nothing more is
known.


The following works can be unreservedly recommended:


W. H. R. Rivers by Richard Slobodin (Sutton Publishing, 1997)


Memories of Lewis Carroll by Katharine Rivers, with an Introduction
by Richard Slobodin (Library Research News, McMaster University,
1976)

Collected Letters of Wilfred Owen (Oxford University Press, 1967) Wilfred Owen 
by Jon Stallworthy (Oxford University Press, 1974) Owen the Poet by Dominic 
Hibberd (Macmillan, 1986) Wilfred Owen, The Last Year by Dominic Hibberd 
(Constable, 1992)


59i


THE GHOST ROAD


Wiljred Owen's Voices: Language and Community by Douglas Kerr
(Clarendon Press, 1993)


Wilfred Owen, Poet and Soldier by Helen McPhail (Gliddon Books in
association with the Wilfred Owen Association, 1993)


592




Pat Barker was born in Thornaby-on-Tees in
1943. She was educated at the London School
of Economics and has been a teacher of history
and politics. Her other books include Union
Street (1982), which won the Fawcett Prize
and was filmed as Stanley and Iris, Blow Your
House Down (1984), Liza's England (1986),
formerly The Century's Daughter, The Man Who
Wasn't There (1989), Regeneration (1991), The
Eye in the Door (1993), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost 
Road (1995), which won the Booker Prize.


Cover image based on a black and white photograph (Q 2978), reproduced by
courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
Author photograph by Paddy Cooke
Pat Barker's outstanding Regeneration Trilogy comprises:


Regeneration

'[A] sombre, brilliant novel...at its centre is a
real-life encounter that occurred at
Craiglockhart in 1917 between W. H. R.
Rivers, an army psychologist, and Siegfried
Sassoon...Intense and subtle, getting
responsively under the skin of both real and
imagined characters, Regeneration is receptive to
all aspects of the era - and the heroes -- it
(resurrects' -- Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times


The Eye in the Door

The Eye in the Door is gripping, moving,
(beautifully constructed and profoundly
[intelligent. It centres on the terrible trauma
suffered by young First World War veterans, B ut is also about gender, class, 
truth, survival
md love. It has revelatory -- and still relevant -- phings to say about 
Britain, yet it is bursting w ith energy and darkly funny'
Candice Rodd in the Independent on Sunday


The Ghost Road

The Ghost Road defies superlatives...Barker's str ong, descriptive prose, 
humane detachment,
mflinching eye and probing exploration into th e minds of men damaged by war 
has resulted
an atmospheric, unforgettable, valuable
avel which brings to a close a trilogy de manding to be read by everyone'
l-Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times
BY THE SAME AUTHOR


Union Street
Blow Your House Down

Liza's England (formerly The Century's Daughter)
The Man Who Wasn't There
PAT BARKER


The Regeneration Trilogy


VIKING
VIKING


Published by the Penguin Group

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The Regeneration Trilogy tint published 1966

Regeneration published by Viking 1991

The Eye in the Door first published by Viking 1993

The Ghost Road first published by Viking 1995

13

Copyright © Pat Barker, 1991, 1993, 1995
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For David,

and in loving memory of Dr John Hawkings
(1922-1987)
CONTENTS


Regeneration    i

The Eye in the Door 223
The Ghost Road  425
REGENERATION
Part One
ONE


Finished with the War A Soldier's Declaration


I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority,
because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have
the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe
that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has
now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes
for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been
so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had
this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by
negotiation.

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be
a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and
unjust.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the
political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being
sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the
deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to
destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home
regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they
have not sufficient imagination to realize.


S. Sassoon
July 1917


Bryce waited for Rivers to finish reading before he spoke again. 'The
"S" stands for "Siegfried". Apparently, he thought that was better left
out.'

'And I'm sure he was right.' Rivers folded the paper and ran his
fingertips along the edge. 'So they're sending him here?'
REGENERATION


Bryce smiled. 'Oh, I think it's rather more specific than that. They're
sending him to you.'

Rivers got up and walked across to the window. It was a fine day,
and many of the patients were in the hospital grounds, watching a
game of tennis. He heard the pok-pok of rackets, and a cry of frustration
as a ball smashed into the net. 'I suppose he is -- "shellshocked"?'
'According to the Board, yes.'

'It just occurs to me that a diagnosis of neurasthenia might not be
inconvenient confronted with this.' He held up the Declaration.

'Colonel Langdon chaired the Board. He certainly seems to think he
is.'

'Langdon doesn't believe in shellshock.'

Bryce shrugged. 'Perhaps Sassoon was gibbering all over the floor.'

'"Funk, old boy." I know Langdon.' Rivers came back to his chair
and sat down. 'He doesn't sound as if he's gibbering, does he?'

Bryce said carefully, 'Does it matter what his mental state is? Surely
it's better for him to be here than in prison?'

'Better for him, perhaps. What about the hospital? Can you imagine
what our dear Director of Medical Services is going to say, when he
finds out we're sheltering "conchies" as well as cowards, shirkers,
scrimshankers and degenerates? We'll just have to hope there's no
publicity.'

'There's going to be, I'm afraid. The Declaration's going to be read
out in the House of Commons next week.'

'By?'

'Lees-Smith.'

Rivers made a dismissive gesture.

'Yes, well, I know. But it still means the press.'

'And the minister will say that no disciplinary action has been taken,
because Mr Sassoon is suffering from a severe mental breakdown, and
therefore not responsible for his actions. I'm not sure I'd prefer that to
prison.'

'I don't suppose he was offered the choice. Will you take him?'

'You mean I am being offered a choice?'

'In view of your case load, yes.'

Rivers took off his glasses and swept his hand down across his eyes.
'I suppose they have remembered to send the file?'
REGENERATION


Sassoon leant out of the carriage window, still halt-expecting to see
Graves come pounding along the platform, looking even more dishevelled
than usual. But further down the train, doors had already begun
to slam, and the platform remained empty.

The whistle blew. Immediately, he saw lines of men with grey
muttering faces clambering up the ladders to face the guns. He blinked
them away.

The train began to move. Too late for Robert now. Prisoner
arrives without escort, Sassoon thought, sliding open the carriage
door.

By arriving an hour early he'd managed to get a window seat. He
began picking his way across to it through the tangle of feet. An
elderly vicar, two middle-aged men, both looking as if they'd done
rather well out of the war, a young girl and an older woman, obviously
travelling together. The train bumped over a point. Everybody rocked
and swayed, and Sassoon, stumbling, almost fell into the vicar's lap. He
mumbled an apology and sat down. Admiring glances, and not only
from the women. Sassoon turned to look out of the window, hunching
his shoulder against them all.

After a while he stopped pretending to look at the smoking chimneys
of Liverpool's back streets and closed his eyes. He needed to sleep, but
instead Robert's face floated in front of him, white and twitching as it
had been last Sunday, almost a week ago now, in the lounge of the
Exchange Hotel.


For a moment, looking up to find that khaki-clad figure standing just
inside the door, he thought he was hallucinating again.

'Robert, what on earth are you doing here?' He jumped up and ran
across the lounge. 'Thank God you've come.'

'I got myself passed fit.'

'Robert, tw.'

'What else could I do? After getting this.' Graves dug into his tunic
pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper. 'A covering letter
would have been nice.'

'I wrote.'

'No, you didn't, Sass. You just sent me this. Couldn't you at least
have talked about it first?'

'I thought I'd written.'

They sat down, facing each other across a small table. Cold northern
REGENERATION


light streamed in through the high windows, draining Graves's face of
the little colour it had.

'Sass, you've got to give this up.'

'Give it up? You don't think I've come this far, do you, just to give
in now?'

'Look, you've made your protest. For what it's worth, I agree with
every word of it. But you've had your say. There's no point making a
martyr of yourself.'

'The only way I can get publicity is to make them court-martial me.'

'They won't do it.'

'Oh, yes, they will. It's just a matter of hanging on.'

'You're in no state to stand a court-martial.' Graves clasped his
clenched fist. 'If I had Russell here now, I'd shoot him.'

'It was my idea.'

'Oh, pull the other one. And even if it was, do you think anybody's
going to understand it? They'll just say you've got cold feet.'

'Look, Robert, you think exactly as I do about the war, and you do
. . . nothing. All right, that's your choice. But don't come here lecturing me 
about cold feet. This is the hardest thing I've ever done.'


Now, on the train going to Craiglockhart, it still seemed the hardest
thing. He shifted in his seat and sighed, looking out over fields of
wheat bending to the wind. He remembered the silvery sound of
shaken wheat, the shimmer of light on the stalks. He'd have given
anything to be out there, away from the stuffiness of the carriage, the
itch and constriction of his uniform.


On that Sunday they'd taken the train to Formby and spent the afternoon
wandering aimlessly along the beach. A dull, wintry-looking sun
cast their shadows far behind them, so that every gesture either of
them made was mimicked and magnified.

'They won't let you make a martyr of yourself, Sass. You should
have accepted the Board.'

The discussion had become repetitive. For perhaps the fourth time,
Sassoon said, 'If I hold out long enough, there's nothing else they can do.'

'There's a lot they can do.' Graves seemed to come to a decision. 'As
a matter of fact, I've been pulling a few strings on your behalf.'

Sassoon smiled to hide his anger. 'Good. If you've been exercising
your usual tact, that ought to get me at least two years.'

'They won't court-martial you.'
REGENERATION


In spite of himself, Sassoon began to feel afraid. 'What, then?'

'Shut you up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of the war.'

'And that's the result of your string-pulling, is it? Thanks.'

'No, the result of my string-pulling is to get you another Board.
You must take it this time.'

'You can't put people in lunatic asylums just like that. You have to
have reasons.'

'They've got reasons.'

'Yes, the Declaration. Well, that doesn't prove me insane.'

'And the hallucinations? The corpses in Piccadilly?'

A long silence. 'I had rather hoped my letters to you were private.'

'I had to persuade them to give you another Board.'

'They won't court-martial me?'

'No. Not in any circumstances. And if you go on refusing to be
boarded, they will put you away.'

'You know, Robert, I wouldn't believe this from anybody else.
Will you swear it's true?'

'Yes.'

'On the Bible?'

Graves held up an imaginary Bible and raised his right hand. 'I
swear.'

Their shadows stretched out behind them, black on the white sand.
For a moment Sassoon still hesitated. Then, with an odd little gasp, he
said, 'All right then, I'll give way.'


In the taxi, going to Craiglockhart, Sassoon began to feel frightened.
He looked out of the window at the crowded pavements of Princes
Street, thinking he was seeing them for the first and last time. He
couldn't imagine what awaited him at Craiglockhart, but he didn't for
a moment suppose the inmates were let out.

He glanced up and found the taxi-driver watching him in the mirror.
All the local people must know the name of the hospital, and what it
was for. Sassoon's hand went up to his chest and began pulling at a
loose thread where his ME ribbon had been.


For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained
for i± hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded.
Owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were
brought in.

Reading the citation, it seemed to Rivers more extraordinary than
REGENERATION


ever that Sassoon should have thrown the medal away. Even the most
extreme pacifist could hardly be ashamed of a medal awarded for saving life. He 
took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He'd been
working on the file for over an hour, but, although he was now
confident he knew all the facts, he was no closer to an understanding of
Sassoon's state of mind. If anything, Graves's evidence to the Board -- with 
its emphasis on hallucinations - seemed to suggest a full-blown
psychosis rather than neurasthenia. And yet there was no other evidence
for that. Misguided the Declaration might well be, but it was not
deluded, illogical or incoherent. Only the throwing away of the medal
still struck him as odd. That surely had been the action of a man at the
end of his tether.

Well, we've all been there, he thought. The trouble was, he was
finding it difficult to examine the evidence impartially. He wanted Sassoon to 
be ill. Admitting this made him pause. He got up and began
pacing the floor of his room, from door to window and back again.
He'd only ever encountered one similar case, a man who'd refused to
go on fighting on religious grounds. Atrocities took place on both
sides, he'd said. There was nothing to choose between the British and
the Germans.

The case had given rise to heated discussions in the MO's common
room -- about the freedom of the individual conscience in wartime,
and the role of the army psychiatrist in 'treating' a man who refused to
fight. Rivers, listening to those arguments, had been left in no doubt
of the depth and seriousness of the divisions. The controversy had died
down only when the patient proved to be psychotic. That was the
crux of the matter. A man like Sassoon would always be trouble, but
he'd be a lot less trouble if he were ill.

Rivers was roused from these thoughts by the crunch of tyres on
gravel. He reached the window in time to see a taxi draw up, and a
man, who from his uniform could only be Sassoon, get out. After
paying the driver, Sassoon stood for a moment, looking up at the
building. Nobody arriving at Craiglockhart for the first time could fail
to be daunted by the sheer gloomy, cavernous bulk of the place.
Sassoon lingered on the drive for a full minute after the taxi had driven
away, then took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and ran up the
steps.

Rivers turned away from the window, feeling almost ashamed of
having witnessed that small, private victory over fear.


10
REGENERATION


TWO


Light from the window behind Rivers's desk fell directly on to Sassoon's
face. Pale skin, purple shadows under the eyes. Apart from that,
no obvious signs of nervous disorder. No twitches, jerks, blinks, no
repeated ducking to avoid a long-exploded shell. His hands, doing
complicated things with cup, saucer, plate, sandwiches, cake, sugar
tongs and spoon, were perfectly steady. Rivers raised his own cup to
his lips and smiled. One of the nice things about serving afternoon tea
to newly arrived patients was that it made so many neurological tests
redundant.

So far he hadn't looked at Rivers. He sat with his head slightly
averted, a posture that could easily have been taken for arrogance,
though Rivers was more inclined to suspect shyness. The voice was
slightly slurred, the flow of words sometimes hesitant, sometimes
rushed. A disguised stammer, perhaps, but a life-long stammer, Rivers
thought, not the recent, self-conscious stammer of the neurasthenic.

'While I remember, Captain Graves rang to say he'll be along some
time after dinner. He sent his apologies for missing the train.'

'He is still coming?'

'Yes.'

Sassoon looked relieved. 'Do you know, I don't think Graves's
caught a train in his life? Unless somebody was there to put him on
it.'

'We were rather concerned about you.'

'In case the lunatic went missing?'

'I wouldn't put it quite like that.'

'I was all right. I wasn't even surprised, I thought he'd slept in. He's
been doing a ... a lot of rushing round on my behalf recently. You've
no idea how much work goes into rigging a Medical Board.'

Rivers pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead and massaged the
inner corners of his eyes. 'No, I don't suppose I have. You know this
may sound naive but... to we ... the accusation that a Medical Board
has been rigged is quite a serious one.'

'I've no complaints. I was dealt -with in a perfectly fair and reasonable
way. Probably better than I deserved.'

'What kind of questions did they ask?'

Sassoon smiled. 'Don't you know?'
REGENERATION


'I've read the report, if that's what you mean. I'd still like to hear
your version.'

'Oh: "Did I object to fighting on religious grounds?" I said I didn't.
It was rather amusing, actually. For a moment I thought they were
asking me whether I objected to going on a crusade. "Did I think I
was qualified to decide when the war should end?" I said I hadn't
thought about my qualifications.' He glanced at Rivers. 'Not true. And
then . . . then Colonel Langdon asked said "Your friend tells us you're
very good at bombing. Don't you still dislike the Germans?"'

A long silence. The net curtain behind Rivers's head billowed out in
a glimmering arc, and a gust of cool air passed over their faces.

'And what did you say to that?'

'I don't remember.' He sounded impatient now. 'It didn't matter
what I said.'

'It matters now.'

'All right.' A faint smile. "Yes, I am quite good at bombing. No, I do
not still dislike the Germans.'

'Does that mean you once did?'

Sassoon looked surprised. For the first time something had been said
that contradicted his assumptions. 'Briefly. April and May of last year,
to be precise.'

A pause. Rivers waited. After a while Sassoon went on, almost
reluctantly. 'A friend of mine had been killed. For a while I used to go
out on patrol every night, looking for Germans to kill. Or rather I told
myself that's what I was doing. In the end I didn't know whether I was
trying to kill them, or just giving them plenty of opportunities to kill
me.'

'"Mad Jack."'

Sassoon looked taken aback. 'Graves really has talked, hasn't he?'

'It's the kind of thing the Medical Board would need to know.'
Rivers hesitated. 'Taking unnecessary risks is one of the first signs of a
war neurosis.'

'Is it?' Sassoon looked down at his hands. 'I didn't know that.'

'Nightmares and hallucinations come later.'

'What's an "unnecessary risk" anyway? The maddest thing / ever
did was done under orders.' He looked up, to see if he should continue.
'We were told to go and get the regimental badges off a German
corpse. They reckoned he'd been dead two days, so obviously if we
got the badges they'd know which battalion was opposite. Full moon,
not a cloud in sight, absolutely mad, but off we went. Well, we got


12
REGENERATION


there -- eventually -- and what do we find? He's been dead a hell of a lot
longer than two days, and he's French anyway.'

'So what did you do?'

'Pulled one of his boots off and sent it back to battalion HQ. With
quite a bit of his leg left inside.'

Rivers allowed another silence to open up. 'I gather we're not going
to talk about nightmares?'

'You're in charge.'

'Ye-es. But then one of the paradoxes of being an army psychiatrist
is that you don't actually get very far by ordering your patients to be
frank.'

'I'll be as frank as you like. I did have nightmares when I first got
back from France. I don't have them now.'

'And the hallucinations?'

He found this more difficult. 'It was just that when I woke up, the
nightmares didn't always stop. So I used to see . . .' A deep breath.
'Corpses. Men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor.'

'And you were awake when this happened?'

'I don't know. I must've been, because I could see the sister.'

'And was this always at night?'
'No. It happened once during the day. I'd been to my club for
lunch, and when I came out I sat on a bench, and ... I suppose I
must've nodded off.' He was forcing himself to go on. 'When I woke
up, the pavement was covered in corpses. Old ones, new ones, black,
green.' His mouth twisted. 'People were treading on their faces.'

Rivers took a deep breath. 'You say you'd just woken up?'

'Yes. I used to sleep quite a bit during the day, because I was afraid
to go to sleep at night.'

'When did all this stop?'

'As soon as I left the hospital. The atmosphere in that place was
really terrible. There was one man who used to boast about killing
German prisoners. You can imagine what living with him was like.'

'And the nightmares haven't recurred?'

'No. I do dream, of course, but not about the war. Sometimes a
dream seems to go on after I've woken up, so there's a a kind of in
between stage.' He hesitated. 'I don't know whether that's abnormal.'

'I hope not. It happens to me all the time.' Rivers sat back in his
chair. 'When you look back now on your time in the hospital, do you think you 
were "shellshocked"?'

'I don't know. Somebody who came to see me told my uncle he


13
REGENERATION


thought I was. As against that, I wrote one or two good poems while I
was in there. We-ell. . .' He smiled. '/ was pleased with them.'

'You don't think it's possible to write a good poem in a state of
shock?'

'No, I don't.'

Rivers nodded. 'You may be right. Would it be possible for me to
see them?'

'Yes, of course. I'll copy them out.'

Rivers said, 'I'd like to move on now to the . . . thinking behind the 
Declaration. You say your motives aren't religious?'

'No, not at all.'

'Would you describe yourself as a pacifist?'

'I don't think so. I can't possibly say "No war is ever justified",
because I haven't thought about it enough. Perhaps some wars are.
Perhaps this one was when it started. I just don't think our war aims -- 
whatever they may be -- and we don't know -- justify this level of
slaughter.'

'And you say you have thought about your qualifications for saying
that?'

'Yes. I'm only too well aware of how it sounds. A second-lieutenant, no less, 
saying "The war must stop". On the other hand, I have been there. I'm at least 
as well qualified as some of the old men you see
sitting around in clubs, cackling on about "attrition" and "wastage of
manpower" and . . .' His voice became a vicious parody of an old
man's voice. ' "Lost heavily in that last scrap." You don't talk like that if
you've watched them die.'

'No intelligent or sensitive person would talk like that anyway.'

A slightly awkward pause. 'I'm not saying there are no exceptions.'

Rivers laughed. 'The point is you hate civilians, don't you? The
"callous", the "complacent", the "unimaginative". Or is "hate" too
strong a word?'

'No.'

'So. What you felt for the Germans, rather briefly, in the spring of
last year, you now feel for the overwhelming majority of your fellow
countrymen?'

'Yes.'

'You know, I think you were quite right not to say too much to the
Board.'

'That wasn't my idea, it was Graves's. He was afraid I'd sound too
sane.'


H
REGENERATION


'When you said the Board was "rigged", what did you mean?'

'I meant the decision to send me here, or or somewhere similar, had
been taken before I went in.'

'And this had all been fixed by Captain Graves?'

'Yes.' Sassoon leant forward. 'The point is they weren't going to
court-martial me. They were just going to lock me up somewhere . . .'
He looked round the room. 'Worse than this.'

Rivers smiled. 'There are worse places, believe me.'

'I'm sure there are,' Sassoon said politely.

'They were going to certify you, in fact?'

'I suppose so.'

'Did anybody on the Board say anything to you about this?'

'No, because it was '

'All fixed beforehand. Yes, I see.'

Sassoon said, 'May I ask you a question?'

'Go ahead'

'Do you think I'm mad?'

'No, of course you're not mad. Did you think you were going
mad?'

'It crossed my mind. You know when you're brought face to face
with the fact that, yes, you did see corpses on the pavement. . .'

'Hallucinations in the half-waking state are surprisingly common,
you know. They're not the same thing as psychotic hallucinations.
Children have them quite frequently.'

Sassoon had started pulling at a loose thread on the breast of his
tunic. Rivers watched him for a while. 'You must've been in agony
when you did that.'

Sassoon lowered his hand. 'No-o. Agony's lying in a shell-hole with
your legs shot off. I was upset.' For a moment he looked almost hostile,
then he relaxed. 'It was a futile gesture. I'm not particularly proud of it.'

'You threw it in the Mersey, didn't you?'

'Yes. It wasn't heavy enough to sink, so it just' - a glint of amusement
- 'bobbed around. There was a ship sailing past, quite a long way out, in
the estuary, and I looked at this little scrap of ribbon floating and I
looked at the ship, and I thought that me trying to stop the war was
a bit like trying to stop the ship would have been. You know, all
they'd've seen from the deck was this little figure jumping up and
down, waving its arms, and they wouldn't've known what on earth
it was getting so excited about.'

'So you realized then that it was futile?'


15
REGENERATION


Sassoon lifted his head. 'It still had to be done. You can't just

acquiesce.'

Rivers hesitated. 'Look, I think we've . . . we've got about as far as

we can get today. You must be very tired.' He stood up. 'I'll see you

tomorrow morning at ten. Oh, and could you ask Captain Graves to

see me as soon as he arrives?'

Sassoon stood up. 'You said a bit back you didn't think I was mad.'
'I'm quite sure you're not. As a matter of fact I don't even think

you've got a war neurosis.'

Sassoon digested this. 'What have I got, then?'

'You seem to have a very powerful anti-war neurosis.'

They looked at each other and laughed. Rivers said, 'You realize,

don't you, that it's my duty to ... to try to change that? I can't

pretend to be neutral.'

Sassoon's glance took in both their uniforms. 'No, of course not.'


Rivers made a point of sitting next to Bryce at dinner.

'Well,' Bryce said, 'what did you make of him?'

'I can't find anything wrong. He doesn't show any sign of depression,
he's not excited --'

'Physically?'

'Nothing.'

'Perhaps he just doesn't want to be killed.'

'Oh, I think he'd be most insulted if you suggested that. To be fair,
he did have a job lined up in Cambridge, training cadets -- so it isn't a
question of avoiding being sent back. He could've taken that if he'd
wanted to save his skin.'

'Any trace of. . . er . . . religious enthusiasm?'

'No, I'm afraid not. I was hoping for that too.'

They looked at each other, amused. 'You know, the curious thing is
I don't think he's even a pacifist? It seems to be entirely a matter of
horror at the extent of the slaughter, combined with a feeling of anger
that the government won't state its war aims and impose some kind of limitation 
on the whole thing. That, and an absolutely corrosive hatred
of civilians. And non-combatants in uniform.'

'What an uncomfortable time you must've had.'

'No-o, I rather gather I was seen as an exception.'

Bryce looked amused. 'Did you like him?

'Yes, very much. And I found him . . . much more impressive than I
expected.'


16
REGENERATION


Sassoon, at his table under the window, sat in silence. The men on
either side of him stammered so badly that conversation would have
been impossible, even if he had wished for it, but he was content to
withdraw into his own thoughts.

He remembered the day before Arras, staggering from the outpost
trench to the main trench and back again, carrying boxes of trench
mortar bombs, passing the same corpses time after time, until their
twisted and blackened shapes began to seem like old friends. At one
point he'd had to pass two hands sticking up out of a heap of pocked
and pitted chalk, like the roots of an overturned tree. No way of
telling if they were British or German hands. No way of persuading
himself it mattered.

'Do you play golf?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I asked if you played golf.'

Small blue eyes, nibbled gingery moustache, an RAMC badge. He
held out his hand. 'Ralph Anderson.'

Sassoon shook hands and introduced himself. 'Yes, I do.'

'What's your handicap?'

Sassoon told him. After all, why not? It seemed an entirely suitable
topic for Bedlam.

'Ah, then we might have a game.'

'I'm afraid I haven't brought my clubs.'

'Send for them. Some of the best courses in the country round here.'

Sassoon had opened his mouth to reply when a commotion started
near the door. As far as he could tell, somebody seemed to have been
sick. At any rate, a thin, yellow-skinned man was on his feet, choking
and gagging. A couple of VADs ran across to him, clucking, fussing,
flapping ineffectually at his tunic with a napkin, until eventually they
had the sense to get him out of the room. The swing doors closed
behind them. A moment's silence, and then, as if nothing had happened,
the buzz of conversation rose again.

Rivers stood up and pushed his plate away. 'I think I'd better go.'

'Why not wait till you've finished?' Bryce said. 'You eat little enough
as it is.'

Rivers patted his midriff. 'Oh, I shan't fade away just yet.'

Whenever Rivers wanted to get to the top floor without being
stopped half a dozen times on the way, he used the back staircase. Pipes
lined the walls, twisting with the turning of the stair, gurgling from
time to time like lengths of human intestine. It was dark, the air stuffy,


i?
REGENERATION


and sweat began to prickle in the roots of his hair. It was a relief to
push the swing door open and come out on to the top corridor, where
the air was cool at least, though he never failed to be depressed by the
long narrow passage with its double row of brown doors and the
absence of natural light. 'Like a trench without the sky' had been one
patient's description, and he was afraid it was only too accurate.

Burns was sitting on his bed, while two VADs helped him off with
his tunic and shirt. His collar bones and ribs were clearly visible beneath
the yellowish skin. The waistband of his breeches gaped.

One of the VADs tugged at it. 'There's room for two in there,' she
said, smiling, coaxing. 'Have I to get in with you?' The other VAD's
frozen expression warned her of Rivers's presence. Till get this sponged
down for you, Captain.'

They hurried past Rivers, bursting into nervous giggles as they
reached the end of the corridor.

Burns's arms were goose-pimpled, though the room was not cold.
The smell of vomit lingered on his breath. Rivers sat down beside
him. He didn't know what to say, and thought it better to say nothing.
After a while he felt the bed begin to shake and put his arm round
Burns's shoulders. 'It doesn't get any better, does it?' he said.

Burns shook his head. After a while Rivers got up, fetched Burns's
coat from the peg behind the door and wrapped it round his shoulders. 'Would it 
be easier to eat in your own room?'

'A bit. I wouldn't have to worry about upsetting other people.'

Yes, Burns would worry about upsetting other people. Perhaps the
most distressing feature of his case was the occasional glimpse of the
cheerful and likeable young man he must once have been.

Rivers looked down at Burns's forearms, noting that the groove
between radius and ulna was even deeper than it had been a week ago.
'Would it help to have a bowl of fruit in your room?' he asked. 'So
you could just pick something up when you felt like it?'

'Yes, that might help.'

Rivers got up and walked across to the window. He's agreeing to
make me feel useful, he thought. 'All right, I'll get them to send
something up.' The shadows of the beech trees had begun to creep
across the tennis courts, which were empty now. Rivers turned from
the window. 'What kind of night did you have?'

'Not too good.'

'Have you made any progress with what we talked about?'


18
REGENERATION


'Not really.' He looked up at Rivers. 'I can't make myself think
about it.'

'No, well, it's early days.'

'You know, the worst thing is . . .' - Burns was scanning Rivers's
face - 'that it's a ... a joke.'

'Yes.'

After leaving Burns, Rivers went up a further short flight of stairs
and unlocked the door to the tower. Apart from his own bedroom,
this was the only place in Craiglockhart he could hope to be alone for
more than a few minutes. The patients weren't allowed out here, in
case the hundred-foot drop to the path below should prove too tempting
an exit from the war. He rested his arms on the iron balustrade and
looked out towards the hills.

Burns. Rivers had become adept at finding bearable aspects to unbearable
experiences, but Burns defeated him. What had happened to him
was so vile, so disgusting, that Rivers could find no redeeming feature.
He'd been thrown into the air by the explosion of a shell and had
landed, head-first, on a German corpse, whose gas-filled belly had
ruptured on impact. Before Burns lost consciousness, he'd had time to
realize that what filled his nose and mouth was decomposing human
flesh. Now, whenever he tried to eat, that taste and smell recurred.
Nightly, he relived the experience, and from every nightmare he awoke
vomiting. Burns on his knees, as Rivers had often seen him, retching
up the last ounce of bile, hardly looked like a human being at all. His
body seemed to have become merely the skin-and-bone casing for a
tormented alimentary canal. His suffering was without purpose or
dignity, and yes, Rivers knew exactly what Burns meant when he said
it was a joke.

Rivers became aware that he was gripping the edge of the parapet
and consciously relaxed his hands. Whenever he spent any time with
Burns, he found himself plagued by questions that in Cambridge, in
peacetime, he might have wanted to pursue, but which in wartime, in
an overcrowded hospital, were no use to him at all. Worse than useless,
since they drained him of energy that rightly belonged to his patients.
In a way, all this had nothing to do with Burns. The sheer extremity of
his suffering set him apart from the rest, but the questions were evoked
by almost every case.

He looked down and saw a taxi turn into the drive. Perhaps this was
the errant Captain Graves arriving at last? Yes, there was Sassoon, too
impatient to wait indoors, running down the steps to meet him.


19
REGENERATION


THREE


Graves, his mouth slightly open, stared up at the massive yellow-grey
facade of Craiglockhart. 'My God.'

Sassoon followed the direction of his gaze. 'That's what I thought.'

Graves picked up his bag and together they went up the steps,
through the black and white tiled entrance hall on to the main corridor.
Sassoon began to smile. 'Fine prisoner's escort you turned out to be.'

'I know, I'm sorry. God, what a day. Do you know, the train
stopped at every station?'

'Well, you're here now. Thank God.'

Graves looked sideways at him. 'As bad as that?'

'Hm. So-so.'

'I don't suppose you've seen anybody yet?'

'I've seen Rivers. Which reminds me, he wants to see you, but I
imagine it'll be all right if you dump your bag first.'

Graves followed Sassoon up the marble staircase to the first floor.

'Here we are.' Sassoon opened a door and stood aside to let Graves
enter. 'The guest room. You've even got a lock on your door.'

'You haven't?'

'No. Nor in the bathroom either.'

'Poor old Sass, you'll just have to fight the VADs off.' Graves swung
his bag on to the nearest chair. 'No, seriously, what's it like?'

'Seriously, it's awful. Come on, the sooner you've seen Rivers the
sooner we can talk.'


'Sassoon asked me to give you this.'

Rivers took the envelope without comment and placed it unopened
on his desk. 'How did you find him?'

The net curtains breathed in the draught from the open window,
and a scent of lime trees invaded the room. A sweet smell. Graves, to
whom all sweet smells were terrible, wiped the sweat from his upper
lip. 'Calmer. I think it's a relief to have things sorted out.'

'I don't know how sorted out they are. You do realize, don't you,
that he can walk out of here at any time?'

'He won't do that,' Graves said definitely. 'He'll be all right now. As
long as the pacifists leave him alone.'

'I had quite a long talk with him this afternoon, but I don't think
REGENERATION


I'm quite clear what happened. I suspect there was a lot going on
behind the scenes?'

Graves smiled. 'You could say that.'

'What exactly?'

'Sassoon sent me a copy of his Declaration. I was in a convalescent
home on the Isle of Wight at the time --'

'He hadn't talked to you about it?'

'No, I haven't seen him since January. I was absolutely horrified. I
could see at once it wouldn't do any good, nobody would follow his
example. He'd just destroy himself, for no reason.' He stopped. When
he spoke again, his voice was very clear and precise. 'Sassoon's the best
platoon commander I've ever known. The men worship him -- if he
wanted German heads on a platter they'd get them. And he loves
them. Being separated from them would kill him. And that's exactly
what a court-martial would've done.'

'He's separated from them here.'

'Yes, but there's a way back. People can accept a breakdown. There's
no way back from being a conchie.'

'So you decided he --'

'Had to be stopped? Yes. I wrote to the CO, asking him to get
Siegfried another Board. He'd already skipped one. Then I contacted
various people I know and managed to persuade them to treat it as a
nervous breakdown. That left Siegfried. I knew it was no use writing.
I had to see him, so I got myself passed fit and went back to Litherland.
He was in a shocking state. He'd just thrown his ME into the Mersey.
Did he tell you that?'

Rivers hesitated. 'I believe it was in the Board's report.'

'Anyway, it took a long time, but he saw sense in the end.'

'What made him give in, do you think?'

'He just couldn't go on denying he was ill.'

Rivers didn't reply. The silence deepened, like a fall of snow, accumulating
second by second, flake by flake, each flake by itself inconsiderable,
until everything is transformed.

'No, it wasn't that.' Graves's knobbly, broken-nosed boxer's face
twitched. 'I lied to him.'

Rivers's glasses flashed as he lifted his head. 'Yes, I thought perhaps
you had.'

'I swore on the Bible they wouldn't court-martial him, but I didn't
know that. I think if he'd held out, they might've done.'

'They might. But you know the advantages of treating this as a
REGENERATION


nervous breakdown would have been quite apparent to the authorities,
even without your pointing them out.'

'The fact remains I lied, and he gave in because he believed the lie.
He wouldn't have believed it from anybody else.' He paused. 'Do you think I was 
wrong?'

Rivers said gently, 'I think you did the best you could for your
friend. Not the best thing for his cause, but then the cause is lost
anyway. Did you find the Board difficult to convince?'

'Quite. There was one youngish man who was sympathetic. The
other two . . . Well. I got the impression they didn't believe in shellshock
at all. As far as they were concerned, it was just cowardice. I
made up my mind right from the start they weren't going to think
that. I told them about last year when he took a German trench single
handed and got recommended for the VC. I'd like to see them do it.
And this April. You know, that bombing expedition of his was fantastic.
Everybody I've spoken to who was there thinks he should've
got the VC for that.' He paused. 'I just wanted them to know what
kind of man they were dealing with.' He smiled. 'I kept bursting into
tears. I think that helped in a way. I could see them thinking, My God,
if this one's fit for duty what can the other one be like?'

'And you told them that he had hallucinations?'

'Yes.' Graves looked slightly uncomfortable. 'I had to convince
them. There were a lot of things I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them
he'd threatened to kill Lloyd George.'

'And you persuaded him to say nothing?'

'Yes. The last thing we needed was Siegfried talking sense about the
war.'

'Sense? You mean you agree with him?'

'Well, yes. In theory. In theory the war should stop tomorrow, but it
won't. It'll go on till there isn't a cat or a dog left to enlist.'

'So you agree with his views, but not his actions? Isn't that rather an
artificial distinction?'

'No, I don't think it is. The way I see it, when you put the uniform
on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a contract
merely because you've changed your mind. You can still speak up for
your principles, you can argue against the ones you're being made to
fight for, but in the end you do the job. And I think that way you gain
more respect. Siegfried isn't going to change people's minds like this. It
may be in him to change people's minds about the war, but this isn't the
way to do it.'
REGENERATION


Rivers took his clasped hands away from his mouth. 'I couldn't
agree with you more.'

'What's infuriating is that basically he knows it better than anybody.
He's the one who can communicate with the ordinary soldier. It's just
that he got taken over by Bertrand Russell and Ottoline Morrell. You
know, I used to admire them. I used to think, well, I don't agree with
you, but, on the other hand, I can see it takes courage . . .' He shook his
head. 'Not any more. I know Russell's over military age, Ottoline's a
woman, fair enough, neither of them can understand what he's been
through, but they could see the state he was in, and they still went ahead. 
They were quite prepared to destroy him for the sake of propagating
their views. I don't forgive them for it.' He made a visible effort to
calm down. 'Anyway, it's over now. But I must say it gave me great
pleasure to write to Russell and tell him Sassoon was on his way here,
and he could just bloody well leave him alone in future.'

'And what about you?' Rivers asked, after a pause. 'Do you think
they'll send you back?'

'No, I don't think so. In fact, the battalion doctor told me if he ever
found my lungs in France again, he'd shoot me himself. I'm hoping for
Palestine.' A pause. 'I'm glad he's here. At least I can go back to
Litherland knowing he's safe.'

'I hope he is.' Rivers stood up. 'And now I think I should let you get
back to him. He'll need company on his first evening.'

After Graves had gone, Rivers sat for a while resting his eyes, then
opened the envelope Graves had given him. Three sheets of paper. On
the top sheet, dated the 22nd April, Sassoon had written in pencil, 'I
wrote these in hospital ten days after I was wounded.'


Groping along the tunnel in the gloom
He winked his tiny torch with whitening glare,
And bumped his helmet, sniffing the hateful air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
And once, the foul, hunched mattress from a bed;
And he exploring, fifty feet below
The rosy dusk of battle overhead.
He tripped and clutched the walls; saw someone lie
Humped and asleep, half-covered with a rug;
He stooped and gave the sleeper's arm a tug.
'I'm looking for headquarters.' No reply.
'Wake up, you sod!' (For days he'd had no sleep.)


23
REGENERATION


'I want a guide along this cursed place.'
He aimed a kick at the unanswering heap;
And flashed his beam across that livid face
Horribly glaring up, whose eyes still wore
The agony that died ten days before
Whose bloody fingers clutched a hideous wound.
Gasping, he staggered onward till he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair,
To clammy creatures groping underground,
Hearing the boom of shells with muffled sound.
Then with the sweat of horror in his hair.
He climbed with darkness to the twilight air.


The General


'Good morning, good morning!' the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
'He's a cheery old card,' muttered Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.


But he did for them both with his plan of attack.


To the Warmongers


I'm back again from hell
With loathsome thoughts to sell;
Secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.
Young faces bleared with blood,
Sucked down into the mud,
You shall hear things like this,
Till the tormented slain
Crawl round and once again,
With limbs that twist awry
Moan out their brutish pain,
As the fighters pass them by.


24
REGENERATION


For you our battles shine

With triumph half-divine;

And the glory of the dead

Kindles in each proud eye.

But a curse is on my head,

That shall not be unsaid,

And the wounds in my heart are red,

For I have watched them die.


Rivers knew so little about poetry that he was almost embarrassed
at the thought of having to comment on these. But then he reminded
himself they'd been given to him as a therapist, not as a literary critic,
and from that point of view they were certainly interesting, particularly
the last.

Everything about the poem suggested that Sassoon's attitude to his
war experience had been the opposite of what one normally encountered.
The typical patient, arriving at Craiglockhart, had usually been
devoting considerable energy to the task of forgetting whatever traumatic
events had precipitated his neurosis. Even if the patient recognized
that the attempt was hopeless, he had usually been encouraged to
persist in it by friends, relatives, even by his previous medical advisers.
The horrors he'd experienced, only partially repressed even by day,
returned with redoubled force to haunt the nights, giving rise to that
most characteristic symptom of war neurosis: the battle nightmare.

Rivers's treatment sometimes consisted simply of encouraging the
patient to abandon his hopeless attempt to forget, and advising him
instead to spend some part of every day remembering. Neither brooding
on the experience, nor trying to pretend it had never happened.
Usually, within a week or two of the patient's starting this treatment,
the nightmares began to be less frequent and less terrifying.

Sassoon's determination to remember might well account for his
early and rapid recovery, though in his case it was motivated less by a
desire to save his own sanity than by a determination to convince
civilians that the war was mad. Writing the poems had obviously been
therapeutic, but then Rivers suspected that writing the Declaration
might have been therapeutic too. He thought that Sassoon's poetry
and his protest sprang from a single source, and each could be linked to
his recovery from that terrible period of nightmares and hallucinations.
If that was true, then persuading Sassoon to give in and go back would
be a much more complicated and risky business than he had thought,
and might well precipitate a relapse.


25
REGENERATION


He sighed and put the poems back in the envelope. Looking at his
watch, he saw that it was time to start his rounds. He'd just reached the
foot of the main staircase when he saw Captain Campbell, bent double
and walking backwards, emerge from the darkened dining room.

'Campbell?'

Campbell spun round. 'Ah, Captain Rivers, just the man.' He came
up to Rivers and, speaking in a discreet whisper that was audible the
length and breadth of the corridor, as Campbell's discreet whispers
tended to be, said, 'That fella they've put in my room.'

'Sassoon. Yes?'

'Don't think he's a German spy, do you?'

Rivers gave the matter careful consideration. 'No, I don't think so.
They never call themselves "Siegfried".'

Campbell looked astonished. 'No more they do.' He nodded, patted
Rivers briskly on the shoulder, and moved off. 'Just thought I'd
mention it,' he called back.

'Thank you, Campbell. Much appreciated.'

Rivers stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, unconsciously
shaking his head.


FOUR


'I was walking up the drive at home. My wife was on the lawn having
tea with some other ladies, they were all wearing white. As I got
closer, my wife stood up and smiled and waved and then her expression
changed and all the other ladies began to look at each other. I couldn't
understand why, and then I looked down and saw that I was naked.'

'What had you been wearing?'

'Uniform. When I saw how frightened they were, it made me frightened.
I started to run and I was running through bushes. I was being
chased by my father-in-law and two orderlies. Eventually they got me
cornered and my father-in-law came towards me, waving a big stick.
It had a snake wound round it. He was using it as a kind of flail, and
the snake was hissing. I backed away, but they got hold of me and tied
me up.'

Rivers detected a slight hesitation. 'What with?'


26
REGENERATION


A pause. In determinedly casual tones Anderson said, 'A pair of
lady's corsets. They fastened them round my arms and tied the
laces.'

'Like a strait-waistcoat?'

'Yes.'

Then?'

'Then I was carted off to some kind of carriage. I was thrown inside
and the doors banged shut and it was very dark. Like a grave. The first
time I looked it was empty, but then the next time you were there.
You were wearing a post-mortem apron and gloves.'

It was obvious from his tone that he'd finished. Rivers smiled and
said, 'It's a long time since I've worn those.'

'I haven't recently worn corsets.'

'Whose corsets were they?'

'Just corsets. You want me to say my wife's, don't you?'

Rivers was taken back. 'I want you to say --'

'Well, I really don't think they were. I suppose it is possible someone
might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly emasculating experience?'

'I think most people do.' Though not many said so. 'I want you to
say what you think.'

No response.

'You say you woke up vomiting?'

'Yes.'

'I wonder why? I mean I can quite see the sight of me in a postmortem
apron might not be to everybody's taste --'

'I don't know.'

'What was the most frightening thing about the dream?'

'The snake.'

A long silence.

'Do you often dream about snakes?'

'Yes.'

Another long silence. 'Well, go on, then,' Anderson exploded at
last. 'That's what you Freudian Johnnies are on about all the time, isn't
it? Nudity, snakes, corsets. You might at least try to look grateful, Rivers. 
It's a gift.'

'I think if I'd made any association at all with the snake - and after
all what possible relevance can my associations have? - it was probably
with the one that's crawling up your lapel.'

Anderson looked down at the caduceus badge of the RAMC which


27
REGENERATION


he wore on his tunic, and then across at the same badge on Rivers's
tunic.

'What the er snake might suggest is that medicine is an issue between
yourself and your father-in-law?'

'No.'

'Not at all?'

'No.'

Another long silence. Anderson said, 'It depends what you mean by
an issue.'

'A subject on which there is habitual disagreement.'

'No. Naturally my time in France has left me with a certain level of
distaste for the practice of medicine, but that'll go in time. There's no 
issue. I have a wife and child to support.'

'You're how old?'

'Thirty-six.'

'And your little boy?'

Anderson's expression softened. 'Five.'

'School fees coming up?'

'Yes. I'll be all right once I've had a rest. Basically, I'm paying for
last summer. Do you know, at one point we averaged ten amputations
a day? Every time I was due for leave it was cancelled.' He looked
straight at Rivers. 'There's no doubt what the problem is. Tiredness.'

'I still find the vomiting puzzling. Especially since you say you feel
no more than a mild disinclination for medicine.'

'I didn't say mild, I said temporary.'

'Ah. What in particular do you find difficult?'

'I don't know that there is any thing particular.'

A long silence.

Anderson said, 'I'm going to start timing these silences, Rivers.'

'It's already been done. Some of the younger ones had a sweepstake
on it. I'm not supposed to know.'

'Blood.'

'And you attribute this to the ten amputations a day?'

'No, I was all right then. The ... er ... problem started later. I
wasn't at Etaples when it happened, I'd been moved forward -- the
13th CCS. They brought in this lad. He was a Frenchman, he'd
escaped from the German lines. Covered in mud. There wasn't an inch
of skin showing anywhere. And you know it's not like ordinary mud,
it's five, six inches thick. Bleeding. Frantic with pain. No English.' A
pause. 'I missed it. I treated the minor wounds and missed the major


28
REGENERATION


one.' He gave a short, hissing laugh. 'Not that the minor ones were all
that minor. He started to haemorrhage, and . . . there was nothing I
could do. I just stood there and watched him bleed to death.' His face
twisted. 'It pumped out of him.'

It was a while before either of them stirred. Then Anderson said, 'If
you're wondering why that one, I don't know. I've seen many worse
deaths.'

'Have you told your family?'

'No. They know I don't like the idea of going back to medicine, but
they don't know why.'

'Have you talked to your wife?'

'Now and then. You have to think about the practicalities, Rivers.
I've devoted all my adult life to medicine. I've no private income to
tide me over. And I do have a wife and a child.'

'Public health might be a possibility.'

'It doesn't have much . . . dash about it, does it?'

'Is that a consideration?'

Anderson hesitated. 'Not with me.'

'Well, we can talk about the practicalities later. You still haven't
told me when you said enough.'

Anderson smiled. 'You make it sound like a decision. I don't know
that lying on the floor in a pool of piss counts as a decision.' He paused.
'The following morning. On the ward. I remember them all looking
down at me. Awkward situation, really. What do you do when the
doctor breaks down?'

At intervals, as Rivers was doing his rounds as orderly officer for the
day, he thought about this dream. It was disturbing in many ways. At
first he'd been inclined to see the post-mortem apron as expressing no
more than a lack of faith in him, or, more accurately, in his methods,
since obviously any doctor who spends much time so attired is not
meeting with uniform success on the wards. This lack of faith he knew
to be present. Anderson, in his first interview, had virtually refused
treatment, claiming that rest, the endless pursuit of golf balls, was all
that he required. He had some knowledge of Freud, though derived
mainly from secondary or prejudiced sources, and disliked, or perhaps
feared, what he thought he knew. There was no particular reason why
Anderson, who was, after all, a surgeon, should be well informed
about Freudian therapy, but his misconceptions had resulted in a
marked reluctance to reveal his dreams. Yet his dreams could hardly be
ignored, if only because they were currently keeping the whole of one


29
regeneration


floor of the hospital awake. His room-mate, Featherstone, had deteriorated
markedly as the result of Anderson's nightly outbursts. Still, that
was another problem. As soon as Anderson had revealed that extreme
horror of blood, Rivers had begun tentatively to attach another meaning
to the post-mortem apron. If Anderson could see no way out of
returning to the practice of a profession which must inevitably, even in
civilian life, recall the horrors he'd witnessed in France, then perhaps he
was desperate enough to have considered suicide? That might account
both for the post-mortem apron and for the extreme terror he'd felt on
waking. At the moment he didn't know Anderson well enough to be
able to say whether suicide was a possibility or not, but it would
certainly need to be borne in mind.


The smell of chlorine became stronger as they reached the bottom of
the stairs. Sassoon felt Graves hesitate. 'Are you all right?'

'I could do without the smell.'

'Well, let's not bother '

'No, go on.'

Sassoon pushed the door open. The pool was empty, a green slab
between -white walls. They began to undress, putting their clothes on
one of the benches that lined the end wall.

'What's your room-mate like?' Graves asked.

'All right.'

'Dotty?'

'Not visibly. I gather the subject of German spies is best avoided.
Oh, and I've found out why there aren't any locks on the doors. One
of them killed himself three weeks ago.'

Graves caught sight of the scar on Sassoon's shoulder and stopped to
look at it. It was curiously restful to submit to this scrutiny, which was
prolonged, detailed and impersonal, like one small boy examining the
scabs on another's knee. 'Oh, very neat.'

'Yes, isn't it? The doctors kept telling me how beautiful it was.'

'You -were lucky, you know. An inch further down --'

'Not as lucky as you.' Sassoon glanced at the shrapnel wound on
Graves's thigh. 'An inch further up --'

'If this is leading up to a joke about ladies' choirs, forget it. I've
heard them all.'

Sassoon dived in. A green, silent world, no sound except the bubble
of his escaping breath, no feeling, once the shock of cold was over,
except the tightening of his chest that at last forced him to the surface,


30
REGENERATION


air, noise, light, slopping waves crashing in on him again. He swam to
the side and held on. Graves's dark head bobbed purposefully along at
the other side of the pool. Sassoon thought, we joke about it, but it
happens. There'd been a boy in the hospital, while he was lying there
with that neat little hole in his shoulder. The boy - he couldn't have
been more than nineteen -- had a neat little hole too. Only his was
between the legs. The dressings had been terrible to witness, and you
had to witness them. No treatment in that overcrowded ward had
been private. Twice a day the nurses came in with the creaking trolley,
and the boy's eyes followed them up the ward.

Sassoon shut the lid on the memory and dived for Graves's legs.
Graves twisted and fought, his head a black rock splintering white
foam. 'Lay off,' he gasped at last, pushing Sassoon away. 'Some of us
don't have the full complement of lungs.'

The pool was beginning to fill up. After a few more minutes, they
climbed out and started to dress. Head muffled in the folds of his shirt,
Graves said, 'By the way, I think there's something I ought to tell
you. I'm afraid I told Rivers about your plan to assassinate Lloyd
George.'


Rivers's round as duty officer ended in the kitchens. Mrs Cooper, her
broad arms splashed with fat from giant frying-pans, greeted him with
an embattled smile. 'What d' y' think of the beef stew last night, then,
sir?'

'I don't believe I've ever tasted anything quite like it.'

Mrs Cooper's smile broadened. 'We do the best we can with the
materials available, sir.' Her expression became grim and confiding.
'That beef was walking.'

Rivers got to his room a few minutes after ten and found Sassoon
waiting, his hair damp, smelling of chlorine. 'I'm sorry I'm late,'
Rivers said, unlocking the door. 'I've just been pretending to know
something about catering. Come in.' He waved Sassoon to the chair in
front of the desk, tossed his cap and cane to one side, and was about to
unbuckle his belt when he remembered that the Director of Medical
Services was due to visit the hospital some time that day. He sat down
behind the desk and drew Sassoon's file towards him. 'Did you sleep
well?'

'Very well, thank you.'

'You look rested. I enjoyed meeting Captain Graves.'

'Yes, I gather you found it quite informative.'


31
REGENERATION


'Ah.' Rivers paused in the act of opening the file. 'You mean he told
me something you'd rather I didn't know?'

'No, not necessarily. Just something I might have preferred to tell
you myself.' A moment's silence, then Sassoon burst out, 'What I can't
understand is how somebody of Graves's intelligence can can can have
such a shaky grasp of of rhetoric.'

Rivers smiled. 'You were going to kill Lloyd George rhetorically,
were you?'

'I wasn't going to kill him at all. I said I felt like killing him, but it
was no use, because they'd only shut me up in a lunatic asylum, "like
Richard Dadd of glorious memory". There you are, exact words.' He
looked round the room. 'Though as things have turned out --'

'This is not a lunatic asylum. You are not locked up.'

'Sorry.'

'What you're really saying is that Graves took you too seriously.'

'It's not just that. It suits him to attribute everything I've done to to
to to ... a state of mental breakdown, because then he doesn't have to
ask himself any awkward questions. Like why he agrees with me about
the war and does nothing about it.'

Rivers waited a few moments. 'I know Richard Dadd was a painter.
What else did he do?'

A short silence. 'He murdered his father.'

Rivers was puzzled by the slight awkwardness. He was used to
being adopted as a father figure -- he was, after all, thirty years older
than the youngest of his patients -- but it was rare for it to happen as
quickly as this in a man of Sassoon's age. ' "Of glorious memory"?'

'He ... er ... made a list of old men in power who deserved to die,
and fortunately -- or or otherwise -- his father's name headed the list.
He carried him for half a mile through Hyde Park and then drowned
him in the Serpentine in full view of everybody on the banks. The
only reason Graves and I know about him is that we were in trenches
with two of his great nephews, Edmund and Julian.' The slight smile
faded. 'Now Edmund's dead, and Julian's got a bullet in the throat and
can't speak. The other brother was killed too. Gallipoli.'

'Like your brother.'

'Yes.'

'Your father's dead too, isn't he? How old were you when he died?'

'Eight. But I hadn't seen much of him for some time before that. He
left home when I was five.'

'Do you remember him?'


32
REGENERATION


'A bit. I remember 1 used to like being kissed by him because his
moustache tickled. My brothers went to the funeral. I didn't - apparently
I was too upset. Probably just as well, because they came back
terrified. It was a Jewish funeral, you see, and they couldn't understand
what was going on. My elder brother said it was two old men in funny
hats walking up and down saying jabber-jabber-jabber.'

'You must've felt you'd lost him twice.'

'Yes. We did lose him twice.'

Rivers gazed out of the window. 'What difference would it have
made, do you think, if your father had lived?'

A long silence. 'Better education.'

'But you went to Marlborough?'

'Yes, but I was years behind everybody else. Mother had this
theory we were delicate and our brains shouldn't be taxed. I don't
think I ever really caught up. I left Cambridge without taking my
degree.'

'And then?'

Sassoon shook his head. 'Nothing much. Hunting, cricket. Writing
poems. Not very good poems.'

'Didn't you find it all ... rather unsatisfying?'

'Yes, but I couldn't seem to see a way out. It was like being three
different people, and they all wanted to go different ways.' A slight
smile. 'The result was I went nowhere.'

Rivers waited.

'I mean, there was the riding, hunting, cricketing me, and then there
was the . . . the other side . . . that was interested in poetry and music,
and things like that. And I didn't seem able to . . .' He laced his fingers.
'Knot them together.'

'And the third?'

'I'm sorry?'

'You said three.'

'Did I? I meant two.'

Ah. 'And then the war. You joined up on the first day?'

'Yes, in the ranks. I couldn't wait to get in.'

'Your superior officers wrote glowing reports for the Board. Did
you know that?'

A flush of pleasure. 'I think the army's probably the only place I've
ever really belonged.'

'And you've cut yourself off from it.'

'Yes, because --'


33
REGENERATION


'I'm not interested in the reasons at the moment. I'm more interested
in the result. The effect on you.'

'Isolation, I suppose. I can't talk to anybody.'

'You talk to me. Or at least, I think you do.'

'You don't say stupid things.'

Rivers turned his head away. 'I'm pleased about that.'

'Go on, laugh. I don't mind.'

'You'd been offered a job in Cambridge, hadn't you? Teaching
cadets.'

Sassoon frowned. 'Yes.'

'But you didn't take it?'

'No. It was either prison or France.' He laughed. 'I didn't foresee
this.'

Rivers watched him staring round the room. 'You can't bear to be
safe, can you?' He waited for a reply. 'Well, you've got twelve weeks
of it. At least. If you go on refusing to serve, you'll be safe for the rest
of the war.'

Two red spots appeared on Sassoon's cheekbones. 'Not my choice.'

'I didn't say it was.' Rivers paused. 'You know you reacted then as
if I were attacking you, and yet all I did was to point out the facts.' He 
leant forward. 'If you maintain your protest, you can expect to
spend the remainder of the war in a state of Complete. Personal.
Safety.'
Sassoon shifted in his seat. 'I'm not responsible for other people's
decisions.'

'You don't think you might find being safe while other people die rather 
difficult?'

A flash of anger. 'Nobody else in this stinking country seems to
find it difficult. I expect I'll just learn to live with it. Like everybody
else.'


Burns stood at the window of his room. Rain had blurred the landscape,
dissolving sky and hills together in a wash of grey. He loathed
wet weather because then everybody stayed indoors, sitting around the
patients' common room, talking, in strained or facetious tones, about
the war the war the war.

A sharper gust of wind blew rain against the glass. Somehow or
other he was going to have to get out. It wasn't forbidden, it was even
encouraged, though he himself didn't go out much. He got his coat
and went downstairs. On the corridor he met one of the nurses from


34
REGENERATION


his ward, who looked surprised to see him wearing his coat, but didn't
ask where he was going.

At the main gates he stopped. Because he'd been inside so long, the
possibilities seemed endless, though they resolved themselves quickly
into two. Into Edinburgh, or away. And that was no choice at all: he
knew he wasn't up to facing traffic.

For the first few stops the bus was crowded. He sat on the bench seat
close to the door of the bus. People smelling of wet wool jerked and
swayed against him, bumping his knees, and he tensed, not liking the
contact or the smell. But then at every stop more and more people got
off until he was almost alone, except for an old man and the clippie.
The lanes were narrower now; the trees rushed in on either side. A
branch rattled along the windows with a sound like machine-gun fire,
and he had to bite his lips to stop himself crying out.

He got off at the next stop, and stood, looking up and down a
country lane. He didn't know what to do at first, it was so long since
he'd been anywhere alone. Raindrops dripped from the trees, big,
splashy, persistent drops, finding the warm place between his collar
and his neck. He looked up and down the lane again. Somewhere
further along, a wood pigeon cooed monotonously. He crossed over
and began climbing the hill between the trees.

Up, up, until his way was barred by a fence whose wire twitched in
the wind. A tuft of grey wool had caught on one of the barbs. Burns
blinked the rain out of his eyes. He pressed two strands of wire apart
and eased himself through, catching his sleeve, and breaking into a
sweat as he struggled to free it.

Trembling now, he began to scramble along the edge of the
ploughed field, slipping and stumbling, his mud-encumbered boots
like lead weights pulling on the muscles of his thighs. His body was
cold inside the stiff khaki, except for a burning round the knees where
the tight cloth chafed the skin.

He was walking up the slope of a hill, tensing himself against the
wind that seemed to be trying to scrape him off its side. As he reached
the crest, a fiercer gust snatched his breath. After that he kept his head
bent, sometimes stopping to draw a deeper breath through the steeple
of his cupped hands. Rain beat on to his head, dripping from the peak
of his cap, the small bones of nose and jaw had started to sing. He
stopped and looked across the field. The distance had vanished in a veil
of rain. He didn't know where he was going, or why, but he thought
he ought to take shelter, and began to run clumsily along the brow of a


35
REGENERATION


hill towards a distant clump of trees. The mud dragged at him, he had
to slow to a walk. Every step was a separate effort, hauling his mud
clogged boots out of the sucking earth. His mind was incapable of
making comparisons, but his aching thighs remembered, and he listened
for the whine of shells.

When at last he reached the trees, he sat down with his back to the
nearest, and for a while did nothing at all, not even wipe away the
drops of rain that gathered on the tip of his nose and dripped into his
open mouth. Then, blinking, he dragged his wet sleeve across his face.

After a while he got to his feet and began stumbling, almost blindly,
between the trees, catching his feet in clumps of bracken. Something
brushed against his cheek, and he raised his hand to push it away. His
fingers touched slime, and he snatched them back. He turned and saw a
dead mole, suspended, apparently, in air, its black fur spiked with
blood, its small pink hands folded on its chest.

Looking up, he saw that the tree he stood under was laden with dead
animals. Bore them like fruit. A whole branch of moles in various
stages of decay, a ferret, a weasel, three magpies, a fox, the fox hanging
quite close, its lips curled back from bloodied teeth.

He started to run, but the trees were against him. Branches clipped
his face, twigs tore at him, roots tripped him. Once he was sent sprawling,
though immediately he was up again, and running, his coat a mess
of mud and dead leaves.

Out in the field, splashing along the flooded furrows, he heard
Rivers's voice, as distinctly as he sometimes heard it in dreams: If you
run now, you'll never stop.

He turned and went back, though he knew the voice was only a
voice in his head, and that the real Rivers might equally well have said: Get 
away from here. He stood again in front of the tree. Now that he
was calmer, he remembered that he'd seen trees like this before. The
animals were not nailed to it, as they sometimes were, but tied, by
wings or paws or tails. He started to release a magpie, his teeth chattering
as a wing came away in his hand. Then the other magpies, the fox,
the weasel, the ferret and the moles.

When all the corpses were on the ground, he arranged them in a
circle round the tree and sat down within it, his back against the trunk.
He felt the roughness of the bark against his knobbly spine. He pressed
his hands between his knees and looked around the circle of his companions.
Now they could dissolve into the earth as they were meant to do.
He felt a great urge to lie down beside them, but his clothes separated


36
REGENERATION


him. He got up and started to get undressed. When he'd finished, he
looked down at himself. His naked body was white as a root. He
cupped his genitals in his hands, not because he was ashamed, but
because they looked incongruous, they didn't seem to belong with the
rest of him. Then he folded his clothes carefully and put them outside
the circle. He sat down again with his back to the tree and looked up
through the tracery of branches at grey and scudding clouds.

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't
occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had
wanted to be.


By late afternoon Burns's absence was giving cause for concern. The
nurse who'd seen him walk out, wearing his coat, blamed herself for
not stopping him, but nobody else was inclined to blame her. The
patients, except for one or two who were known to be high suicide
risks, were free to come and go as they pleased. Bryce and Rivers
consulted together at intervals during the day, trying to decide at what
point they should give in and call the police.

Burns came back at six o'clock, walking up the stairs unobserved,
trailing mud, twigs and dead leaves. He was too tired to think. His legs
ached; he was faint with hunger yet afraid to think of food.

Sister Duffy caught him just as he was opening the door of his room
and bore down upon him, scolding and twittering like the small, dusty
brown bird she so much resembled. She made him get undressed then
and there and seemed to be proposing to towel him down herself, but
he vetoed that. She left him alone but came back a few minutes later,
laden with hot-water bottles and extra blankets, still inclined to scold,
though when she saw how tired he looked, lying back against the
pillows, she checked herself and only said ominously that Dr Rivers
had been informed and would be up as soon as he was free.

I suppose I'm for it, Burns thought, but couldn't make the thought
real. He folded his arms across his face and almost at once began
drifting off to sleep. He was back in the wood, outside the circle now,
but able to see himself inside it. His skin was tallow-white against the
scurfy bark. A shaft of sunlight filtered through leaves, found one of
the magpies, and its feathers shone sapphire, emerald, amethyst. There
was no reason to go back, he thought. He could stay here for ever.

When he opened his eyes, Rivers was sitting beside the bed. He'd
obviously been there some time, his glasses were in his lap, and one
hand covered his eyes. The room was quite dark.


37
REGENERATION


Rivers seemed to feel Burns watching him, because after a few
moments he looked up and smiled.

'How long have I been asleep?'

'About an hour.'

'I've worried everybody, haven't I?'

'Never mind that. You're back, that's all that matters.'

All the way back to the hospital Burns had kept asking himself why
he was going back. Now, waking up to find Rivers sitting by his bed,
unaware of being observed, tired and patient, he realized he'd come
back for this.


FIVE


Rivers started his night round early. Sister Rogers was in her room,
drinking the first of the many cups of coffee that would see her
through the night. 'Second-Lieutenant Prior,' she said, as soon as she
saw him.

'Yes, I know, and there's nothing I can do about it.' Prior was a new
patient, whose nightmares were so bad that his room-mate was getting
no sleep. 'Has he spoken to anybody yet?'

'No, and if you speak to him he just stares straight through you.'

It was unlike Sister Rogers to take a dislike to a patient, but there
was no mistaking the animosity in her voice. 'All right,' Rivers said,
'let's have a look at him.'
Prior was lying on his bed, reading. He was a thin, fair-haired
young man of twenty-two with high cheekbones, a short, blunt nose
and a supercilious expression. He looked up as Rivers came in, but
didn't close the book.

'Sister tells me you had a bad night?'

Prior produced an elaborate shrug. Out of the corner of his eye
Rivers saw Sister Rogers's lips tighten. 'What did you dream
about?'

Prior reached for the notepad and pencil he kept beside his bed and
scrawled in block capitals, 'I DON'T REMEMBER.'

'Nothing at all?'

Prior hesitated, then wrote, 'NO.'


38
REGENERATION


'Does he talk in his sleep, sister?'

Rivers was looking at Prior as he asked the question, and thought he
detected a flicker of uneasiness.

'Nothing you can get hold of.'

Prior's lips curled, but he couldn't hide the relief.

'Could you get me a teaspoon, sister?' Rivers asked.

While she was out of the room, Prior went on staring at Rivers.
Rivers, trying to keep the meeting from becoming a confrontation,
looked around the room. Sister Rogers came back. 'Thank you. Now
I just want to have a look at the back of your throat.'

Again the pad came out. 'THERE'S NOTHING PHYSICALY

wrong;

'Two 1's in "physically", Mr Prior. Open wide.'

Rivers drew the end of the teaspoon, not roughly, but firmly, across
the back of Prior's throat. Prior choked, his eyes watered, and he tried
to push Rivers's hand away.

There's no area of analgesia,' Rivers said to Sister Rogers.

Prior snatched up the pad. 'IF THAT MEANS IT HURT YES
IT DID.'

'I don't think it hurt, did it?' Rivers said. 'It may have been
uncomfortable.'

'HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?'
Sister Rogers made a clicking noise with her tongue.

'Do you think you could give us ten minutes alone, sister?'

'Yes, of course, doctor.' She glared at Prior. 'I'll be in my room if
you need me.'

After she'd gone, Rivers said, 'Why do you always write in block
capitals? Because it's less revealing?'

Prior shook his head. He wrote, 'CLEARER.'

'Depends on your handwriting, doesn't it? I know, if I ever lost my voice, I'd 
have to write in capitals. Nobody can read mine.'

Prior offered the pad. Rivers, feeling like a schoolboy playing
noughts and crosses, wrote: 'Your file still hasn't arrived.'

'I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN.'

Rivers said, 'Your file still hasn't arrived.'

Another elaborate shrug.

'Well, I'm afraid it's rather more serious than that. If it doesn't show
up soon, we're going to have to try to get a history together -- like this.
And that's not going to be easy.'

'WHY?'


39
REGENERATION


'Why do we have to do it? Because I need to know what's happened
to you.'

'I DON'T REMEMBER.'

'No, not at the moment, perhaps, but the memory will start to
come back.'

A long silence. At last Prior scribbled something, then turned over
on his side to face the wall. Rivers leant across and picked the pad up.
Prior had written: 'NO MORE WORDS.'


'I must say it makes Dottyville almost bearable,' Sassoon said, looking
up and down the station platform. 'Knowing you don't have to be
vomited over at every meal. I'd cat out every night if I could afford it.'

'You'll have to spend some time in the place, Sass.' No reply. 'At
least you've got Rivers.'

'And at least Rivers doesn't pretend there's anything wrong with
my nerves.'

Graves started to speak and checked himself. 'I wish I could say the
same about mine.'

'What can I say, Robert? Have my bed. You live with a herd of
lunatics. I'll go back to Liverpool.'

'I hate it when you talk like that. As if everybody who breaks down
is inferior. We've all been' -- Graves held up his thumb and forefinger --
'that close.'

'I know how close I've been.' A short silence, then he burst out,
'Don't you see, Robert, that's why I hate the place? I'm frightened.'

'Frightened? You? You're not frightened.' He craned round to see
Sassoon's expression. 'Are you?'

'Evidently not.'

They stood in silence for a minute.

'You ought to be getting back,' Graves said.

'Yes, I think you're right. I don't want to attract attention to myself.'
He held out his hand. 'Well. Give everybody my regards. If they still
want them.'

Graves took the hand and pulled him into a bear hug. 'Don't be so
bloody stupid, Siegfried. You know they do.'

Alone and shivering on the pavement, Sassoon thought about taking
a taxi and decided against it. The walk would do him good, and if he
hurried he could probably make it back in time. He threaded his way
through the crowds on Princes Street. Now that Robert was gone, he
hated everybody, giggling girls, portly middle-aged men, women


40
REGENERATION


whose eyes settled on his wound stripe like flies. Only the young
soldier home on leave, staggering out of a pub, dazed and vacant-eyed,
escaped his disgust.

Once he'd left the city behind, he began to relax and swing along as
he might have done in France. He remembered the march to Arras
behind a limber whose swaying lantern cast huge shadows of striding
legs across a white-washed wall. Then . . . No more walls. Ruined
buildings. Shelled roads. 'From sunlight to the sunless land.' And for a
second he was back there, Armageddon, Golgotha, there were no
words, a place of desolation so complete no imagination could have
invented it. He thought of Rivers, and what he'd said that morning
about finding safety unbearable. Well, Rivers was wrong, people were
more corruptible than that. He was more corruptible than that. A few
days of safety, and all the clear spirit of the trenches was gone. It was
still, after all these weeks, pure joy to go to bed in white sheets and
know that he would wake. The road smelled of hot tar, moths flickered
between the trees, and when at last, turning up the drive into Craiglock
hart, he stopped and threw back his head, the stars burst on his upturned
face like spray.


A nightly bath had become essential to Rivers, a ritual that divided his
meagre spare time from the demands of the hospital. He was already
pulling his tunic off as he crossed the bedroom. Naked, he sat on the
edge of the bath, waiting for it to fill. The hot tap was shiny; the cold,
misted over, dewed with drops of condensed steam. Absentmindedly,
he played with the drops, making them run together to form larger
pools. He was thinking about Prior, and the effect he was having on
his room-mate, Robinson, and wondering whether it was worse than
the effect Anderson was having on Featherstone. In any event, no
single room was available. One solution to the Prior problem was to
move Robinson into a room at present shared by two patients, although
if the overcrowding were not to prove intolerable, the patients
would have to be very carefully selected. He was still running through
possible combinations as he bathed.

By his bed was the current issue of Man, still in its envelope. He
hadn't managed even to glance through it yet. And suddenly he was
turious with the hospital, and Prior, and overcrowding and the endless
permutations of people sharing that were made necessary by nightmares,
sleep-walking, the need of some patients for night-lights and
others for absolute darkness.


4i
REGENERATION


His irritation, groping for an object, fastened on Sassoon. Sassoon
made no secret of his belief that anybody who supported the continuation
of the war must be actuated by selfish motives, and yet if Rivers
had allowed such motives to dominate, he'd have wanted the war to
end tonight. Let the next generation cope with the unresolved problem
of German militarism, just get me back to Cambridge and research. He
flicked through the journal, but he was too tired to concentrate, and,
after a few minutes, he switched off the light.

Shortly before dawn he woke. Still dazed from sleep, he put his
hand to his left arm, expecting to feel blood. The dry cloth of his
pyjama sleeve told him he'd been dreaming. He switched on the lamp
and lay for a while, recollecting the details of the dream, then picked
up a notepad and pencil from his bedside table and began to write.


I was in my room at St John's, sitting at the table in front of the book case.
Head was beside me, his left sleeve rolled up, and his eyes closed. The sleeve
was rolled up well above his elbow, so that the full length of the incision was
revealed. The scar was purple. The tablecloth was spread with various items
of equipment: jugs of water, wisps of cotton wool, bristle brushes, compasses,
ice cubes, pins.

My task was to map the area of hypersensitivity to pain on Head's
forearm. He sat with his eyes closed and his face turned slightly away. Every
time I pricked him he cried out and tried to pull his arm away. I was
distressed by this and didn't want to go on, but I knew I had to. Head kept
on crying out.

The dream changed and I was drawing a map of the protopathic area
directly on to his skin. The pen was as painful as the needle had been. Head
opened his eyes and said something I didn't catch. It sounded like, 'Why
don't you try it?' He was holding an object out towards me. I looked down
to see what it was, and saw that my own left arm was bare, though I
couldn't recall rolling up my sleeve.

The object in Head's hand was a scalpel. I began to ask him to repeat
what he'd said, but before I could get the words out, he'd leant forward and
brought the scalpel down my arm, in the region of the elbow. The incision,
although about six inches long, was so fine that at first there was no blood.
After a second, small beads of blood began to appear, and at that point I
woke up.


Rivers started to analyse the dream. The manifest content didn't take
long. Except for the cutting of his arm, the dream was an unusually
accurate reproduction of events that had actually occurred.


42
REGENERATION


Henry Head had been working for some time on the regeneration
f nerves after accidental injury, using as his subjects patients in the
nublic wards of London hospitals, before concluding that, if any further
progress was to be made, more rigorously controlled tests would have
to be done. Rivers had pointed out that these would have to be carried
out on a subject who was himself a trained observer, since an extremely
high degree of critical awareness would be needed to exclude preconceptions.
Head had volunteered himself as the subject of the proposed
experiment, and Rivers had assisted at the operation in which Head's
radial nerve had been severed and sutured. Then, together, over a
period of five years, they had charted the progress of regeneration.

During the early stage of recovery, when the primitive, protopathic
sensibility had been restored, but not yet the finely discriminating
epicritic sensibility, many of the experiments had been extremely painful.
Protopathic sensibility seemed to have an 'all or nothing' quality.
The threshold of sensation was high, but, once crossed, the sensations
were both abnormally widely diffused and -- to use Head's own word -- 
'extreme'. At times a pinprick would cause severe and prolonged
pain. Rivers had often felt distress at the amount of pain he was
causing, but it would not, in life, have occurred to him to stop the
experiment for that reason, any more than it would have occurred to
Head. In the dream, however, the wish to stop the experiment had
been prominent.

The latent content was more difficult. Superficially, the dream
seemed to support Freud's contention that all dreams were wish fulfilment.
Rivers had wished himself back in Cambridge, doing research,
and the dream had fulfilled the wish. But that was to ignore the fact
that the dream had not been pleasant. The emphasis in the dream had
been on the distress he felt at causing pain, and, on waking, the affect
had been one of fear and dread. He didn't believe such a dream could
be convincingly explained as wish fulfilment, unless, of course, he
wished to torture one of his closest friends. No doubt some of Freud's
more doctrinaire supporters would have little difficulty with that idea,
particularly since the torture took the form of pricking him, but Rivers
couldn't accept it. He was more inclined to seek the meaning of the ream in the 
conflict his dream self had experienced between the duty
to continue the experiment and the reluctance to cause further pain.

Rivers was aware, as a constant background to his work, of a conflict
between his belief that the war must be fought to a finish, for the sake

the succeeding generations, and his horror that such events as those


43
REGENERATION


which had led to Burns's breakdown should be allowed to continue.
This conflict, though a constant feature of his life, would certainly
have been strengthened by his conversations with Sassoon. He'd been
thinking about Sassoon immediately before he went to sleep. But, on
thinking it over, Rivers couldn't see that the dream was a likely dramatization
of that conflict. The war was hardly an experiment, and it
certainly didn't rest with him to decide whether it continued or not.

Recently almost all his dreams had centred on conflicts arising from
his treatment of particular patients. In advising them to remember the
traumatic events that had led to their being sent here, he was, in effect,
inflicting pain, and doing so in pursuit of a treatment that he knew to
be still largely experimental. Only in Burns's case had he found it
impossible to go on giving this advice, because the suffering involved
in Burns's attempts to remember was so extreme. 'Extreme'. The
word Head had used to describe the pain he'd experienced during the
protopathic stage of regeneration. Certainly in Burns's case, there was
a clear conflict between Rivers's desire to continue using a method of
treatment he believed in, but knew to be experimental, and his sense
that in this particular instance the pain involved in insisting on the
method would be too great.

The dream had not merely posed a problem, it had suggested a
solution. 'Why don't you try it?' Henry had said. Rivers felt he'd got
there first, that the dream lagged behind his waking practice: he was
already experimenting on himself. In leading his patients to understand
that breakdown was nothing to be ashamed of, that horror and fear
were inevitable responses to the trauma of war and were better acknowledged
than suppressed, that feelings of tenderness for other men were
natural and right, that tears were an acceptable and helpful part of
grieving, he was setting himself against the whole tenor of their upbringing.
They'd been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence
of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling
fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men. And yet he himself was
a product of the same system, even perhaps a rather extreme product.
Certainly the rigorous repression of emotion and desire had been the
constant theme of his adult life. In advising his young patients to
abandon the attempt at repression and to let themselves feel the pity
and terror their war experience inevitably evoked, he was excavating
the ground he stood on.

The change he demanded of them - and by implication of himself was
not trivial. Fear, tenderness -- these emotions were so despised that


44
REGENERATION


they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining
what it meant to be a man. Not that Rivers's treatment involved any
encouragement of weakness or effeminacy. His patients might be encouraged
to acknowledge their fears, their horror of the war -- but they
were still expected to do their duty and return to France. It was
Rivers's conviction that those who had learned to know themselves,
and to accept their emotions, were less likely to break down again.

In a moment or two an orderly would tap on the door and bring in
his tea. He put the notebook and pencil back on the bedside table.
Henry would be amused by that dream, he thought. If wish fulfilment
had been involved at all, it was surely one of Henry's wishes that had
been fulfilled. At the time of the nerve regeneration experiments,
they'd done a series of control experiments on the glans penis, and
Henry had frequently expressed the desire for a reciprocal application
of ice cubes, bristles, near-boiling water and pins.


SIX


Prior sat with his arms folded over his chest and his head turned
slightly away. His eyelids looked raw from lack of sleep.

'When did your voice come back?' Rivers asked.

'In the middle of the night. I woke up shouting and suddenly I
realized I could talk. It's happened before.'

A Northern accent, not ungrammatical, but with the vowel sounds
distinctly flattened, and the faintest trace of sibilance. Hearing Prior's
voice for the first time had the curious effect of making him look different. 
Thinner, more defensive. And, at the same time, a lot
tougher. A little, spitting, sharp-boned alley cat.

'It comes and goes?'

'Yes.'

'What makes it go?'

Another shrug from the repertoire. 'When I get upset.'

'And coming here upset you?'

I'd have preferred somewhere further south.'

So would I. 'What did you do before the war?'

'I was a clerk in a shipping office.'


45
REGENERATION


'Did you like it?'

'No. It was boring.' He looked down at his hands and immediately
up again. 'What did you do?'

Rivers hesitated. 'Research. Teaching.'

'Did you like it?'

'Yes, very much. Research more than teaching probably, but
He shrugged. 'I enjoy teaching.'

'I noticed. "Two 1's in physically, Mr Prior." '

'What an insufferable thing to say.'

'I thought so.'

'I'm sorry.'

Prior didn't know what to say to that. He looked down at his hands
and mumbled, 'Yes, well.'

'By the way, your file arrived this morning.'

Prior smiled. 'So you know all about me, then?'

'Oh, I wouldn't say that. What did become clear is that you had a
spell in the I3th Casualty Clearing Station in . . .' He looked at the file
again. 'January. Diagnosed neurasthenic.'

Prior hesitated. 'Yees.'

'Deep reflexes abnormal.'

'Yes.'

'But on that occasion no trouble with the voice? Fourteen days later
you were back in the line. Fully recovered?'

'I'd stopped doing the can-can, if that's what you mean.'

'Were there any remaining symptoms?'

'Headaches.' He watched Rivers make a note. 'It's hardly a reason to
stay out of the trenches, is it? "Not tonight, Wilhelm. I've got a
headache"?'

'It might be. It rather depends how bad they were.' He waited for a
reply, but Prior remained obstinately silent. 'You were back in the
I3th CCS in April. This time unable to speak.'

'I've told you, I don't remember.'

'So the loss of memory applies to the later part of your service in
France, but the early part - the first six months or so - is comparatively
clear?'

'Yees.'

Rivers sat back in his chair. 'Would you like to tell me something
about that early part?'

'No.'

'But you do remember it?'


46
REGENERATION


'Doesn't mean I want to talk about it.' He looked round the room. 'I
don't see why it has to be like this anyway.'

'Like what?'

'All the questions from you, all the answers from me. Why can't it be
both ways?'

'Look, Mr Prior, if you went to the doctor with bronchitis and he
spent half the consultation time telling you about his lumbago, you
would not be pleased. Would you?'

'No, but if I went to my doctor in despair it might help to know he
at least understood the meaning of the word.'

'Are you in despair?'

Prior sighed, ostentatiously impatient.

'You know, I talk to a lot of people who are in despair or very close
to it, and my experience is that they don't care what the doctor feels.
That's the whole point about despair, isn't it? That you turn in on
yourself

'Well, all I can say is I'd rather talk to a real person than a strip of
empathic wallpaper.'

Rivers smiled. 'I like that.'

Prior glared at him.

'If you feel you can't talk about France, would it help to talk about
the nightmares?'

'No. I don't think talking helps. It just churns things up and makes
them seem more real.'

'But they are real.'

A short silence. Rivers closed Prior's file. 'All right. Good morning.'

Prior looked at the clock. 'It's only twenty past ten.'

Rivers spread his hands.

'You can't refuse to talk to me.'

'Prior, there are a hundred and sixty-eight patients in this hospital,
all of them wanting to get better, none of them getting the attention
he deserves. Good morning.'

Prior started to get up, then sat down again. 'You've no right to say
I don't want to get better.'

'I didn't say that.'

'You implied it.'

'All right. Do you want to get better?'

'Of course.'

'But you're not prepared to co-operate with the treatment.'

'I don't agree with the treatment.'


47
REGENERATION


Deep breath. 'What methods of treatment do you favour?'

'Dr Sanderson was going to try hypnosis.'

'He doesn't mention it in his report.'

'He was. He told me.'

'How did you feel about that?'

'I thought it was a good idea. I mean you're more or less saying:
things are real, you've got to face them, but how can I face them when
I don't know what they are?'

'That's rather an unusual reaction, you know. Generally, when a
doctor suggests hypnosis the patient's quite nervous, because he feels
he'll be ... putting himself in somebody else's power. Actually that's
not quite true, but it does tend to be the fear.'

'If it's not true, why don't you use it?'

'I do sometimes. In selected cases. As a last resort. In your case, I'd
want to know quite a lot about the part of your war service that you do 
remember.'

'All right. What do you want to know?'

Rivers blinked, surprised by the sudden capitulation. 'Well, anything
you want to tell me.'

Silence.

'Perhaps you could start with the day before you went into the
CCS for the first time. Do you remember what you were doing that
day?'

Prior smiled. 'Standing up to my waist in water in a dugout in the
middle of No Man's Land being bombed to buggery.'

'Why?'

'Good question. You should pack this in and join the general staff.'

'If there wasn't a reason, there must at least have been a rationale.'

'There was that, all right.' Prior adopted a strangled version of the
public school accent. 'The pride of the British Army requires that
absolute dominance must be maintained in No Man's Land at all
times.' He dropped the accent. 'Which in practice means . . . Dugout in
the middle of No Man's Land. Right? Every forty-eight hours two
platoons crawl out - night-time, of course - relieve the poor bastards
inside, and provide the Germans with another forty-eight hours' target
practice. Why it's thought they need all this target practice is beyond
me. They seem quite accurate enough as it is.' His expression changed.
'It was flooded. You stand the whole time. Most of the time in pitch
darkness because the blast kept blowing the candles out. We were
packed in so tight we couldn't move. And they just went all out to get


48
REGENERATION


us. One shell after the other. I lost two sentries. Direet hit on the steps.
Couldn't find a thing.'

'And you had forty-eight hours of that?'

'Fifty. The relieving officer wasn't in a hurry.'

'And when you came out you went straight to the CCS?'

'I didn't go, I was carried.'

A tap on the door. Rivers called out angrily, 'I'm with a patient.'

A short pause as they listened to footsteps fading down the corridor.
Prior said, 'I met the relieving officer.'

'In the clearing station?'

'No, here. He walked past me on the top corridor. Poor bastard left
his Lewis guns behind. He was lucky not to be court-martialled.'

'Did you speak?'

'We nodded. Look, you might like to think it's one big happy
family out there, but it's not. They despise each other.'

'You mean you despise yourself.'

Prior looked pointedly across Rivers's shoulder. 'It's eleven o'clock.'

'All right. I'll see you tomorrow.'

'I thought of going into Edinburgh tomorrow.'

Rivers looked up. 'At nine.'


'I can guess what Graves said. What a fine upstanding man I was until I
fell among pacifists. Isn't that right? Russell used me. Russell wrote the
Declaration.'

'No, he didn't say that.'

'Good. Because it isn't true.'

'You don't think you were influenced by Russell?'

'No, not particularly. I think I was influenced by my own experience
of the front. I am capable of making up my own mind.'

'Was this the first time you'd encountered pacifism?'

'No. Edward Carpenter, before the war.'

'You read him?'

'Read him. Wrote to him.' He smiled slightly. 'I even made the
Great Pilgrimage to Chesterfield.'

'You must've been impressed to do that.'

Sassoon hesitated. 'Yes, I . . .'

Watching him, Rivers perceived that he'd led Sassoon unwittingly
on to rather intimate territory. He was looking for a way of redirecting
the conversation when Sassoon said, 'I read a book of his. The Intermediate
Sex. I don't know whether you know it?'


49
REGENERATION


'Yes. I've had patients who swore their entire lives had been changed
by it.'

'Mine was. At least I don't know about "changed". "Saved",
perhaps.'

'As bad as that?'

'At one point, yes. I'd got myself into quite a state.'

Rivers waited.

'I didn't seem able to feel. . . well. Any of the things you're supposed
to feel. It got so bad I used to walk all night sometimes. I used to wait
till everybody else was in bed, and then I'd just . . . get out and walk.
The book was a life-saver. Because I suddenly saw that ... I wasn't
just a freak. That there was a positive side. Have you read it?'

Rivers clasped his hands behind his head. 'Yes. A long time ago
now.'

'What did you think?'

'I found it quite difficult. Obviously you have to admire the man's
courage, and the way he's. . . opened up the debate. But I don't know
that the concept of an intermediate sex is as helpful as people think it is
when they first encounter it. In the end nobody wants to be neuter. Anyway, the 
point is Carpenter's pacifism doesn't seem to have made
much impression?'

'I don't know if I was aware of it even. I didn't think much about
politics. The next time I encountered pacifism was Robert Ross. I met
him, oh, I suppose two years ago. He's totally opposed to the war.'

'And that didn't influence you either?'

'No. Obviously it made things easier at a personal level. I mean,
frankly, any middle-aged man who Believed in The War would
Sassoon skidded to a halt. 'Present company excepted.'

Rivers bowed.

'I didn't even bother showing him the Declaration. I knew he
wouldn't go along with it.'

'Why wouldn't he? Out of concern for you?'

'Ye-es. Yes, that certainly, but. . . Ross was a close friend of Wilde's.
I suppose he's learnt to keep his head below the parapet.'

'And you haven't.'

'I don't like holes in the ground.'

Rivers began polishing his glasses on his handkerchief. 'You know, I
realize Ross's caution probably seems excessive. To you. But I hope
you won't be in too much of a hurry to dismiss it. There's nothing
more despicable than using a man's private life to discredit his views.


50
REGENERATION


But it's very frequently done, even by people in my profession. People
you might think wouldn't resort to such tactics. I wouldn't like to see
it happen to you.'

'I thought discrediting my views was what you were about?'
Rivers smiled wryly. 'Let's just say I'm fussy about the methods.'


Rivers had kept two hours free of appointments in the late afternoon
in order to get on with the backlog of reports. He'd been working for
half an hour when Miss Crowe tapped on the door. 'Mr Prior says
could he have a word?'

Rivers pulled a face. 'I've seen him once today. Does he say what's
wrong?'

'No, this is the father.'

'I didn't even know he was coming.'

She started to close the door. Till tell him you're busy, shall I?'

'No, no, I'll see him.'

Mr Prior came in. He was a big, thick-set man with a ruddy complexion,
dark hair sleeked back, and a luxuriant, drooping, reddish-brown
moustache. 'I'm sorry to drop on you like this,' he said. 'I thought our
Billy had told you we were coming.'

'I think he probably mentioned it. If he did, I'm afraid it slipped my
mind.'

Mr Prior looked him shrewdly up and down. 'Nah. Wasn't your
mind it slipped.'

'Well, sit down. How did you find him?'

'Difficult to tell when they won't talk, isn't it?'

'Isn't he talking? He was this morning.'

'Well, he's not now.'

'It does come and go.'

'Oh, I'm sure. Comes when it's convenient and goes when it isn't.
What's supposed to be the matter?'

'Physically, nothing.' Two 1's, Rivers thought. 'I think perhaps
there's something he's afraid to talk about, so he solves the problem by
making it impossible for himself to speak. This is ... beneath the
surface. He doesn't know what he's doing.'

'If he doesn't, it'll be the first time.'

Rivers tried a different tack. 'I believe he volunteered, didn't he?
The first week of the war.'

'He did. Against my advice, not that that's ever counted for much.'

'You didn't want him to go?'


5i
REGENERATION


'No I did not. I told him, time enough to do summat for the Empire
when the Empire's done summat for you.'

'It is natural for the young to be idealistic.'

'Ideals had nowt to do with it. He was desperate to get out of his
job.'

'I think I remember him saying he didn't like it. He was a clerk in a
shipping office.'

'That's right, and getting nowhere. Twenty years wearing the arse
of your breeches out and then, if you're a good boy and lick all the
right places, you get to be supervisor and then you sit on a bigger stool
and watch other people wear their breeches out. Didn't suit our Billy.
He's ambitious, you know, you mightn't think it to look at him, but
he is. His mam drilled that into him. Schooled him in it. She was determined he 
was going to get on.'

Rather unexpectedly, Rivers found himself wanting to leap to Billy
Prior's defence. 'She seems to have succeeded.'

Mr Prior snorted. 'She's made a stool-arsed jack on him, if that's
what you mean.'

'You make it sound as if you had no say.'

'I didn't. All the years that lad was growing up there was only one
time I put my oar in, and that was when there was this lad at school
picking on him. He was forever coming in crying. And one day I
thought, well, I've had enough of this. So the next time he come in
blubbing I give him a backhander and shoved him out the door. There
he was, all tears and snot, yelling his bloody head off. He says, he's
waiting for us, our Dad. I says, go on, then. You've got to toughen
'em up, you know, in our neighbourhood. If you lie down there's
plenty to walk over you.'

'What happened?'

'Got the shit beat out of him. And the next day. And the next. But -- and this 
is our Billy - when he did finally take a tumble to himself and
hit the little sod he didn't just hit him, he half bloody murdered him. I
had his father coming round, and all sorts. Not but what he got short
shrift.'

He seemed to have no feeling for his son at all, except contempt.
'You must be proud of his being an officer?'

'Must I? 7'm not proud. He should've stuck with his own. Except he
can't, can he? That's what she's done to him. He's neither fish nor
fowl, and she's too bloody daft to see it. But I tell you one person who does 
see it.' He pointed to the ceiling. 'Oh it's all very lovey-dovey on


52
REGENERATION


the surface but underneath he doesn't thank her for it.' He stood up.
'Anyway I'd best be getting back. His nibs'll have a fit, when he knows
I've seen you. Wheezing badly, isn't he?' He caught Rivers's expression.
'Oh, I see, he wasn't wheezing either? Not what you could call a
successful visit.'

'I'm sure it's done him a lot of good. We often find they don't settle
till they've seen their families.'

Mr Prior nodded, accepting the reassurance without believing it.
'Any idea how long he'll be here?'

'Twelve weeks. Initially.'

'Hm. He'd get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a
bullet up his arse. Anyway . . .' He held out his hand. 'It's been nice
meeting you. I don't know when we'll be up again.'


Rivers had completed two reports when Miss Crowe put her head
round the door again. 'Mrs Prior.'

They exchanged glances. Rivers threw down his pen, and said,
'Show her in.'

Mrs Prior was a small upright woman, neatly dressed in a dark suit
and mauve blouse. 'I won't stay long,' she said, sitting nervously on
the edge of the chair. She was playing with her wedding ring, pulling
and pushing it over the swollen knuckle. 'I'd like to apologize for my
husband. I thought he was just stepping outside for a smoke, otherwise
I'd've stopped him.'

A carefully genteel voice. Fading prettiness. Billy Prior had got his
build and features from her rather than the father. 'No, I was pleased to
see him. How did you find Billy?'

'Wheezing. I've not seen his chest as tight as that since he was a
child.'

'I didn't even know he was asthmatic.'

'No, well, it doesn't bother him much. Usually. As a child it was
terrible. I used to have to boil kettles in his room. You know, for the
steam?'

'You must be very proud of him.'

Her face softened. 'I am. Because / know how hard it's been. I can
truthfully say he never sat an exam without he was bad with his
asthma.'

'Did he like the shipping office?'

Her mouth shaped itself to say 'yes', then, 'No. It was the same
docks as his father and I think that was the mistake. You know, his


53
REGEN ERATION


father was earning more as a ganger than Billy was as a clerk, and I
think myself there was a little bit of... You see the trouble with my
husband, the block had to chip. Do you know what I mean? He's
never been able to accept that Billy was different. And I think there
might have been a little bit of jealousy as well, because he has, he's had
a hard life. I don't deny that. A lot harder than it need have been,
because his mother sent him to work when he was ten. And no need
for it either, she had two sons working, but there it is. What can you
say? He worships her.' She was silent for a moment, brooding. 'You
know sometimes I think the less you do for them, the better you're
thought of.'

'Would you say Billy and his father were close?'

'No! And yet, you see, the funny thing is our Billy's . . .' She sought
for a way of erasing the tell-tale 'our' from the sentence and, not
finding one, gave a little deprecatory laugh. 'All for "the common
people", as he calls them. I said, "You mean your father?"' She laughed
again. 'Oh, no, he didn't mean his father. I said, "But you know
nothing about the common people. You've had nothing to do with
them." Do you know what he turned round and said? "Whose fault is
that?"'

Miss Crowe tapped on the door. 'Your husband says he's going
now, Mrs Prior.'

'Yes, well, I'll have to go. You'll take care of him, won't you?'

She was close to tears. Rivers said, 'We'll do our best.'

'I'd be grateful if you wouldn't mention I've been to see you. He's
upset enough about his father.'

After she'd gone, Rivers turned to Miss Crowe. 'That was amazing.
Do you know, I think they'd have said anything?'

'You get married couples like that, sir. One sympathetic word and
you're there till midnight. Captain Broadbent's waiting to see you.'

Rivers looked at the pile of papers on his desk and sighed. 'All right,
show him in.' The frustration boiled over. 'And do please try not to call
him "captain". He's no more a captain than I am.'

'You are a captain, Captain Rivers.'

Miss Crowe paused at the door to savour the small moment of
triumph. Rivers smiled and said, 'All right. But at least try not to address 
him as "captain". It really doesn't help him to have his fantasies
confirmed.'

'I'll do my best, sir. Though as long as he's allowed to walk round
the hospital with three stars on his sleeve, I don't see that my remember54
R F, G F. N E R A The I O N


ing to call him "mister" is going to make a great deal of difference.'
She smiled sweetly and withdrew. A moment later she reappeared. 'Mister 
Broadbent, sir.'

'Come in, Mr Broadbent. Sit down.'

It wasn't just the stars. There was also the little matter of the medals,
including the Serbian equivalent of the VC awarded to a foreigner for
the first and only time in its long and glorious history. And then there
were the honorary degrees, though at least he hadn't yet taken to
wearing those on his tunic. However, he was doing very good work
with the hospital chamber orchestra. 'Well, Broadbent, what can I do
for you?'

'I've had some bad news, Dr Rivers,' Broadbent said in his confiding,
insinuating way. 'My mother's been taken ill.'

Rivers didn't believe Broadbent's mother was ill. He didn't believe
Broadbent had a mother. He thought it entirely possible that Broadbent
had been hatched. 'Oh, I am sorry.'

'I was hoping for some leave.'

'You'll have to ask the CO about that.'

'I was hoping you might put a word in for me. You see, I don't
think Major Bryce likes me very much.'

People who'd heard of Broadbent's exploits, but not met him, were
apt to picture a rather florid, swashbuckling, larger-than-life figure. In
reality, Broadbent was a limp, etiolated youth, with a pallid complexion
and a notably damp handshake, whose constant and bizarre infringements
of the hospital rules took up far far too much time. He was quite
right in thinking Bryce didn't like him.

'It's not a question of liking or not liking,' Rivers said. 'Is your
mother very ill?'

'I'm afraid so, Dr Rivers.'

'Then I'm sure Major Bryce will be sympathetic. But it is his decision.
Not mine.'

'I just thought . . .' Suddenly Broadbent's voice hardened. 'This is extremely 
bad for my nerves. You know what happens.'

'I hope it doesn't happen this time. Because last time, if you remember,
you had to be locked up. Why don't you go to see Major Bryce
now?'

'Yes, all right.' Broadbent stood up, reluctantly, and spat, 'Thank you, sir.'

At least he didn't offer to shake hands.


55
RTGENI-RATION


After dinner a Charlie Chaplin film was shown in the cinema 011 the
first floor. The whole of the ground floor was deserted. Rivers, taking
his completed reports along to the office to be typed, saw that a lamp
had been left burning in the patients' common room and went in to
switch it off.

Prior was sitting beneath the windows at the far end of the room,
looking out over the tennis courts, his face and hands bluish in the dim
light. Rivers was tempted to withdraw immediately, but then something
about the isolation of the small figure under the huge windows
made him pause. 'Don't you want to see the film?'

'I couldn't stand the smoke.'

He was wheezing very badly. Rivers went across to the window
and sat beside him. Houscmartins were weaving to and fro above the
tennis courts, feeding on the myriads of tiny insects that were just
visible as a golden haze. He watched them cut, wheel, dive -- how
skilful they were at avoiding collision - and for a moment, under the
spell of the flickering birds, the day's work and responsibility fell
away. But he couldn't ignore Prior's breathing, or the whiteness of the
knuckles where his left hand gripped the chair. He turned and looked
at him, noting the drawn, anxious face. 'It's bad, isn't it?'

'Bit tight.'

Prior was bent forward to help the expansion of his lungs. Looking
at him now, Rivers could see the straightness of the shoulders, the
surprising breadth of chest in a delicately built man. Once you knew it
was obvious. But why nothing on the file?

'I gather you met my father,' Prior gasped. 'Quite a character.'

'He seemed to be a man of strong views.'

Prior's mouth twisted. 'He's a bar-room socialist, if that's what you
mean. Beer and revolution go in, piss conies out.' He attempted a
laugh. 'My mother was quite concerned. "He'll be down there effing
and blinding," she said. "Showing us all up."'

'I liked him.'

'Oh, yes, he's very likeable. Outside the house. I've seen him use my
mother as a football.' The next breath screeched. 'When I was too little
to do anything about it.'

'You know, I think I ought to have a look at that chest.'

Prior managed a ghostly imitation of his usual manner. 'Your room
or mine?'

'The sick bay.'

The walk along the corridor to the lift was painfully slow.


56
REGENT. R ATI ON


'I didn't want you to meet him,' Prior said, as Rivers pressed the
button for the second floor.

'No, I know you didn't. I could hardly refuse.'

'I'm not blaming you.'

'Is it a question of blame?'

While the nurses made up the bed, Rivers examined Prior. He'd
expected Prior to be impossible, but in the event he became strictly
impersonal, gazing over Rivers's shoulder as the stethoscope moved
across his chest. 'All right, put your jacket on.' Rivers folded the
stethoscope. 'I'm surprised you got to France at all with that.'

'They couldn't afford to be fussy.' Prior started the long climb into
the bed. 'I won't be moved to another hospital, will I?'

'No, I shouldn't think so. Four doctors, thirty nurses. I think we
might manage.'

'Only I don't want to be moved.'

Rivers helped him to pull up the sheets. 'I thought you didn't like it
here?'

'Yes, well, you can get used to anything, can't you? Do you think I
could have a towel tied to the bed?'

'Yes, of course. Anything you want.'

'Only it helps, you see. Having something to pull on.'

'What was it like in France? The asthma.'

'Better than at home.'

A shout of laughter from below. Charlie Chaplin in full swing.
Rivers, following Prior's gaze, saw the single lamp and the deep shadows,
and sensed, with a premonitory tightening of his diaphragm, the breath
by-breath agony of the coming night. Till see about the towel,' he said.

He saw Prior settled down for the night. Till be along in the morning,'
he said. Then he went to Sister's room next door and left orders
he was to be woken at once if Prior got worse.


SEVEN


Sassoon woke to the sound of screams and running footsteps. The
screams stopped and then a moment or two later started again. He
peered at his watch and made out that it was ten past four.


57
REGENERATION


Because of the rubber underlay, a pool of sweat had gathered in the
small of his back. The rubbery smell lingered on his skin, a clinical
smell that made his body unfamiliar to him. In the next bed Campbell
snored, a cacophony of grunts, snorts and whistles. No screams ever
woke him. On the other hand he himself never screamed, and Sassoon
had been at Craiglockhart long enough now to realize how valuable a
room-mate that made him.

Fully awake now, he dragged himself to the bottom of the bed,
lifted the thin curtain and peered out of the window. Wester Hill,
blunt-nosed and brooding, loomed out of the mist. And yesterday, he
thought, shivering a little, his statement had been read in the House of
Commons. He wondered what would happen next. Whether anything
would happen. In any event there was a kind of consolation in knowing
it was out of his hands.

He knew he was shivering more with fear than cold, though it was
difficult to name the fear. The place, perhaps. The haunted faces, the
stammers, the stumbling walks, that indefinable look of being 'mental'.
Craiglockhart frightened him more than the front had ever done.

Upstairs whoever-it-was screamed again. He heard women's voices
and then, a few minutes afterwards, a man's voice. Rivers, he
thought, but he couldn't be sure. Quaking and comfortless, he
propped himself up against the iron bedhead and waited for the
dawn.


Prior hauled himself further up the bed as Rivers came in. He closed
the book he'd been reading and put it down on his bedside table. 'I
thought it was you,' he said. 'I can tell your footsteps.'

Rivers got a chair and sat down by the bed. 'Did you manage to get
back to sleep?'

'Yes. Did you?'

Silence.

'I wasn't being awkward,' Prior said. 'That was concern.'

'I didn't, but it doesn't matter. I don't sleep much after four anyway.'
He caught the flicker of interest. How quickly Prior pounced on any
item of personal information.

'Thanks for showing up.'

'You hated it.'

Prior looked slightly disconcerted, then smiled. 'I don't suppose
anybody'd choose to be seen in such a state. I don't really see why they
had to call you.'


58
RPG FNFRATTON


'They were afraid the fear might bring on another attack. Though
in fact you seem to be breathing more easily.'

Prior took a trial deep breath. 'Yes, I think I am. Do you know I
detect something in myself. I..." He stopped. 'No, I don't think I
want to tell you what I detect.'

'Oh, go on. Professional curiosity. I want to see if I've detected it.'

Prior smiled faintly. 'No, you won't have detected this. I find myself
wanting to impress you. Pathetic, isn't it?'

'I don't think it's pathetic. We all care what the people around us
think, whether we admit it or not.' He paused. 'Though I'm a bit
surprised my opinion matters. I mean, to be quite honest, I didn't think
you liked me very much.'

'There's a limit to how warm you can feel about wallpaper.'

'Oh, we're back to that again, are we?'

Prior turned away, hunching his shoulders. 'No-o.'

Rivers watched him for a while. 'Why do you think it has to be like
that?'

'So that I ... I'm sorry. So that the patient can fantasize freely. So
that the patient can turn you into whoever he wants you to be. Well, all
right. I just think you might consider the possibility that this patient
might want you to be you.'

'All right.'

'All right, what?'

'All right, I'll consider it.'

'I suppose most of them turn you into Daddy, don't they? Well, I'm
a bit too old to be sitting on Daddy's knee.'

'Kicking him on the shins every time you meet him isn't generally
considered more mature.'

'I see. A negative transference. Is that what you think we've got?'

'I hope not.' Rivers couldn't altogether conceal his surprise. 'Where
did you learn that term?'

'I can read.'

'Well, yes, I know, but its '

'Not popular science? No, but then neither is this.'

He reached for the book beside his bed and held it out to Rivers. Rivers
found himself holding a copy of The Todas. He stared for a moment at his
own name on.the spine. He told himself there was no reason why Prior
shouldn't read one of his books, or all of them for that matter. There was
no rational reason for him to feel uneasy. He handed the book back.
'Wouldn't you prefer something lighter? You are ill, after all.'


59
REGENERATION


Prior leant back against his pillows, his eyes gleaming with amusement.
'Do you know, I knew you were going to say that. Now how
did I know that?'

'I didn't realize you were interested in anthropology.'

'Why shouldn't I be?'

'No reason.'

Really, Rivers thought, Prior was cuckoo-backed to the point where
normal conversation became almost impossible. He was flicking
through the book, obviously looking for something in particular. After
a minute or so he held it out again, open at the section on sexual
morality. 'Do they really go on like that?'

Rivers said, as austerely as he knew how, 'Their sexual lives are
conducted along rather different lines from ours.'

'I'll say. They must be bloody knackered. / couldn't keep it up,
could you?'

'I think my age and your asthma might effectively prevent either of
us setting any records.'

'Ah, yes, but I'm only asthmatic part of the time.'

'You have to win, don't you?'

Prior stared intently at him. 'You know, you do a wonderful imitation
of a stuffed shirt. And you're not like that at all, really, are you?'

Rivers took his glasses off and swept his hand across his eyes. 'Mister
Prior.'

'I know, I know, "Tell me about France." All right, what do you
want to know? And please don't say, "Whatever you want to tell
me.'"

'All right. How did you fit in?'

Prior's face shut tight. 'You mean, did I encounter any snobbery?'

'Yes.'

'Not more than I have here.'

Their eyes locked. Rivers said, 'But you did encounter it?'

'Yes. It's made perfectly clear when you arrive that some people are
more welcome than others. It helps if you've been to the right school.
It helps if you hunt, it helps if your shirts are the right colour. Which is
a deep shade of khaki, by the way.'

In spite of himself Rivers looked down at his shirt.

'Borderline,' said Prior.

'And yours?'

'Not borderline. Nowhere near. Oh, and then there's the seat. The
Seat. You know, they sent me on a course once. You have to ride


60
regeneration

round and round this bloody ring with your hands clasped behind
your head. No saddle. No stirrups. It was amazing. Do you know, for
the first time I realized that somewhere at the back of their . . . tiny tiny 
minds they really do believe the whole thing's going to end in one big
glorious cavalry charge. "Stormed at with shot and shell,/Boldly they
rode and well,/Into the jaws of death,/Into the mouth of hell. . ." And
all. That. Rubbish.'

Rivers noticed that Prior's face lit up as he quoted the poem. 'Is it
rubbish?'

'Yes. Oh, all right, I was in love with it once. Shall I tell you
something about that charge? Just as it was about to start an officer saw
three men smoking. He thought that was a bit too casual, so he confiscated
their sabres and sent them into the charge unarmed. Two of
them were killed. The one who survived was flogged the following
day. The military mind doesn't change much, does it? The same mind
now orders men to be punished by tying them to a limber.' Prior
stretched his arms out. 'Like this. Field punishment No. i. "Crucifixion."
Even at the propaganda level can you imagine anybody being stupid enough to 
order this?

Either the position, or his anger, constricted his breathing. He
brought his arms down sharply and rounded his shoulders. Rivers
waited for the spasm to pass. 'How was your seat?'

'Sticky. No, that's good. It means you don't come off.'

A short silence. Prior said, 'You mustn't make too much of it, you
know, the snobbery. I didn't. The only thing that really makes me
angry is when people at home say there are no class distinctions at the
front. Ball-ocks. What you wear, what you eat. Where you sleep.
What you carry. The men are pack animals.' He hesitated. 'You know
the worst thing? What seemed to me the worst thing? I used to go to
this cafe in Amiens and just across the road there was a brothel. The
men used to queue out on to the street.' He looked at Rivers. 'They
get two minutes.'

'And officers?'

'I don't know. Longer than that.' He looked up. 7 don't pay.'

Prior was talking so freely Rivers decided to risk applying pressure.
What were you dreaming about last night?'

'I don't remember.'

Rivers said gently, 'You know, one of the distinguishing characteristics
of nightmares is that they are always remembered.'

'Can't've been a nightmare, then, can it?'


61
REGENERATION


'When I arrived you were on the floor over there. Trying to get
through the wall.'

'I'm sure it's true, if you say so, but I don't remember. The first
thing I remember is you listening to my chest.'

Rivers got up, replaced his chair against the wall and came back to
the bed. 'I can't force you to accept treatment if you don't want it.
You do remember the nightmares. You remember them enough to
walk the floor till two or three o'clock every morning rather than go
to sleep.'

'I wish the night staff didn't feel obliged to act as spies.'

'Now that's just childish, isn't it? You know it's their job.'

Prior refused to look at him.

'All right. I'll see you tomorrow.'

'It isn't fair to say I don't want treatment. I've asked for treatment
and you've refused to give it me.'

Rivers looked blank. 'Oh, I see. The hypnosis. I didn't think you
were serious.'

'Why shouldn't I be serious? It is used to recover lost memory, isn't
it?'

'Yees.'

'So why won't you do it?'

Rivers started to speak, and stopped.

'I can understand, you know. I'm not stupid.'

'No, I know you're not stupid. It's just that there's . . . there's a
certain amount of technical jargon involved. I was just trying to avoid
it. Basically, people who've dealt with a horrible experience by splitting
it off from the rest of their consciousness sometimes have a general
tendency to deal with any kind of unpleasantness in that way, and if
they have, the tendency is likely to be reinforced by hypnosis. In other
words you might be removing one particular symptom -- loss of
memory -- and making the underlying condition worse.'

'But you do do it?'

'If everything else has failed, yes.'

Prior lay back. 'That's all I wanted to know.'

'In your case not everything else has failed or even been tried. For
example, I'd want to write to your CO. We need a clear picture of the
last few days.' Rivers watched Prior's expression carefully, but he was
giving nothing away. 'But I'd have to go to the CO with a precise
question. You understand that, don't you?'

'Yes.'


62
R F. C. F N F R A The I O N


'There's no point bothering him with a vague inquiry about an
unspecified period of time.'

'No, all right.'

'So we still need you to remember as much as possible by conventional
means. But we can leave it till you're feeling better.'

'No, I want to get on with it.'

'We'll see how you feel tomorrow.'

After leaving Prior, Rivers walked up the back staircase to the
tower and stood for a few moments, his hands on the balustrade,
looking out across the hills. Prior worried him. The whole business of
the demand for hypnosis worried him. At times he felt almost a sense
of foreboding in relation to the case, though he wasn't inclined to give
it much credence. In his experience, premonitions of disaster were
almost invariably proved false, and the road to Calvary entered on
with the very lightest of hearts.


MR MACPHERSON With regard to the case of Second Lieutenant
Sassoon, immediately he heard of it, he consulted his military advisers, and
in response to their inquiries he received the following telegram: A breach of
discipline has been committed, but no disciplinary action has been taken,
since Second Lieutenant Sassoon has been reported by the Medical Board as
not being responsible for his action, as he was suffering from nervous
breakdown. When the military authorities saw the letter referred to, they
felt that there must be something wrong with an extremely gallant officer
who had done excellent work at the front. He hoped hon. members would
hesitate long before they made use of a document written by a young man
in such a state of mind, nor did he think their action would be appreciated
by the friends of the officer. (Cheers.)


Rivers folded The Times and smiled. 'Really, Siegfried, what did
you expect?'

'I don't know. Meanwhile . . .' Sassoon leant across and pointed to
the front page.

Rivers read. ' "Plates. Killed in action on the 28th April, dearly
loved younger son, etc., aged seventeen years and ten months."' He
looked up and found Sassoon watching him.

'He wasn't old enough to enlist. And nobody gives a damn.'

'Of course they do.'

'Oh, come on, it doesn't even put them off their sausages! Have you
ever sat in a club room and watched people read the casualty list?'

'You could say that about the breakfast room here. Sensitivity t-to


63
R F G F. N F R A The I O N


what's going on in France is not best shown by b-bursting into t-tears
over the c-casualty list.' He saw Sassoon noticing the stammer and
made an effort to speak more calmly. 'The thing for you to do now is
face the fact that you're here, and here for at least another eleven
weeks. Have you thought what you're going to do?'

'Not really. I'm still out of breath from getting here. Go for walks.
Read.'

'Will you be able to write, do you think?'

'Oh, yes. I'll write if I have to sit on the roof to do it.'

'There's no prospect of a room of your own.'

'No, I know that.'

Rivers chose his words carefully. 'Captain Campbell is an extremely
nice man.'

'Yes, I've noticed. What's more, his battle plans are saner than
Haig's.'

Rivers ignored that. 'One thing I could do is put you up for my
club, the Conservative Club. I don't know whether you'd like that?
It'd give you an alternative base at least.'

'I would, very much. Thank you.'

'Though I hope you won't exclude the possibility of making friends
here.'

Sassoon looked down at the backs of his hands. 'I thought I might
send for my golf clubs. There seem to be one or two keen golfers
about.'

'Good idea. I'll see you three times a week. It'd better be evenings
rather than mornings, I think - especially if you're going to play golf.
Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays?'

'Fine.' He smiled faintly. 'I've got nothing else on.'

'Eight thirty, shall we say? Immediately after dinner.'

Sassoon nodded. 'It's very kind of you.'

'Oh, I don't know about that.' He closed his appointments book and
pulled a sheet of paper towards him. 'Now I need to ask a few questions
about your physical health. Childhood illnesses, that sort of thing.'

'All right. Why?'

'For the admission report.'

'Oh, I see.'

'I don't usually include any . . . intimate details.'

'Probably just as well. My intimate details disqualify me from military
service.'

Rivers looked up and smiled. 'I know.'


64
REGFNFRATTON


After Sassoon had gone, Rivers got a case sheet from the stack on his
side table, paused for a few moments to collect his thoughts, and began
to write:


Patient joined ranks of the Sussex Yeomanry on Aug. 3rd, 1914. Three
months later he had a bad smash while schooling a horse and was laid up for
several months. In May 1915 he received a commission in the Royal Welch
Fusiliers. He was in France from Nov. 1915 until Aug. 1916, when he was
sent home with trench fever. He had received the Military Cross in June

1916.   He was on three months' sick leave and returned to France in Feb.
1917.   On April i6th, 1917, he was wounded in the right shoulder and was inthe 
surgical wards of the 4th London for four weeks and then at Lady
Brassey's Convalescent Home for three weeks. He then understood that he
was to be sent to Cambridge to instruct cadets.

From an early stage of his service in France, he had been horrified by the
slaughter and had come to doubt whether the continuance of the War was
justifiable. When on sick leave in 1916 he was in communication with
Bertrand Russell and other pacifists. He had never previously approved of
pacifism and does not think he was influenced by this communication.
During his second visit to France, his doubts about the justifiability of the
War were accentuated; he became perhaps even more doubtful about the
way in which the war was being conducted from a military point of view.
When he became fit to return to duty, in July of this year, he felt he was
unable to do so, and that it was his duty to make some kind of protest. He
drew up a statement which he himself regarded as an act of wilful defiance
of military authority (see The Times, July 3ist, 1917). In consequence of this
statement he was ordered to attend a Medical Board at Chester about July
i6th, but failed to attend. It was arranged that a second Board should be held
at Liverpool on July 2Oth, which he attended, and he was recommended for
admission to Craiglockhart War Hospital for special treatment for three
months.

The patient is a healthy looking man of good physique. There are no
physical signs of any disorder of the Nervous System. He discusses his recent
actions and their motives in a perfectly intelligent and rational way, and
there is no evidence of any excitement or depression. He recognizes that his
view of warfare is tinged by his feelings about the death of friends and of the
men who were under his command in France. At the present time he lays
special stress on the hopelessness of any decision in the War as it is now being
conducted, but he left out any reference to this aspect of his opinions in the
statement which he sent to his Commanding Officer and which was read in


65

REGENERATION


the House of Commons. His view differs from that of the ordinary pacifist
in that he would no longer object to the continuance of the War if he saw
any reasonable prospect of a rapid decision.

He had an attack of double pneumonia when n years old, and again at 14.
He was at Marlborough College, where he strained his heart at football. He
was for four terms at Clare College, Cambridge, where he read first Law
and then History, but did not care for either subject. He left Cambridge and
spent the following years living in the country, devoting his time chiefly to
hunting and cricket. He took no interest in Politics. From boyhood he has
written verses at different times, and during his convalescence from his
riding accident in 1914 he wrote a poem called 'The Old Hunstman', which
has recently been published with other poems under that title.


'I gave Broadbent leave,' Bryce said. 'With some trepidation.'

'Yes, he told me he was going to ask you.'

'You know what he's done? Gone off with his room-mate's new
breeches. Marsden's furious.'

Ruggles said, 'You mean this guy's running round the hospital bare
assed frightening the VADs?'

'No, he's wearing his other breeches. And your idea of what might
frighten a VAD is '

'Chivalrous,' said Ruggles.

'Naive,' said Bryce. 'In the extreme.'

'Why is it always your patients, Rivers?' asked Brock.

The MOs were sitting round a table in Bryce's room over coffee, as
they did twice a week after dinner. These gatherings were kept deliberately
informal, but they served some of the same purposes as a case
conference. Since everybody had now read The Times report, Bryce
had asked Rivers to say a few words about Sassoon.

Rivers kept it as brief and uncontroversial as possible. While he was
speaking, he noticed that Brock was balancing a pencil between the
tips of his extremely long bluish fingers. Never a good sign. Rivers
liked Brock, but they didn't invariably see eye to eye.

A moment's silence, after Rivers had finished speaking. Then Ruggles
asked Bryce if the press had shown any interest. While Bryce was
summarizing a conversation he'd had with the Daily Mail, Rivers
watched Brock, who sat, arms folded across his chest, looking down
his long pinched nose at the table. Brock always looked frozen. Even
his voice, high, thin and reedy, seemed to echo across arctic wastes.
When Bryce had finished, Brock turned to Rivers and said, 'What are
you thinking of doing with him?'


66

I
REGENERATION


'Well, I have been seeing him every day. I'm going to drop that
now to three times a week.'

'Isn't that rather a lot? For someone who - according to you - has
nothing wrong with him?'

'I shan't be able to persuade him to go back in less than that.'

'Isn't there a case for leaving him alone?'

'No.'

'I mean, simply by being here he's discredited. Discredited, disgraced, 
apparently lied to by his best friend? I'd've thought there was a case for
letting him be.'

'No, there's no case,' Rivers said. 'He's a mentally and physically
healthy man. It's his duty to go back, and it's my duty to see he does.'

'And you've no doubts about that at all?'

'I don't see the problem. I'm not going to give him electric shocks,
or or subcutaneous injections of ether. I'm simply asking him to defend
his position. Which he admits was reached largely on emotional
grounds.'

'Grie/at the death of his friends. Honor at the slaughter of everybody
else's friends. It isn't clear to me why such emotions have to be
ignored.'

'I'm not saying they should be ignored. Only that they mustn't be
allowed to dominate.'

'The protopathic must know its place?'

Rivers looked taken aback. 'I wouldn't've put it quite like that.'

'Why not? It's your word. And Sassoon does seem to be a remarkably
protopathic young man. Doesn't he? I mean from what you say, it's
"all or nothing" all the time. Happy warrior one minute. Bitter pacifist
the next.'

'Precisely. He's completely inconsistent. And that's all the more
reason to get him to argue the position --'

'Epicritically.'

'Rationally.'

Brock raised his hands and sat back in his chair. 'I hope you don't
mind my playing devil's advocate?'

Good heavens, no. The whole point of these meetings is to protect
the patient.'

Brock smiled, one of his rare, thin, unexpectedly charming smiles.
Is that what I was doing? I thought I was protecting you.'


67
Part Two
I
EIGHT


Prior had lost weight during his time in sick bay. Watching the light
fall on to his face, Rivers noticed how sharp the cheekbones had
become.

'Do you mind if I smoke?'

'No, go ahead.' Rivers pushed an ashtray across the desk.

The match flared behind Prior's cupped hands. 'First for three
weeks,' he said. 'God, I feel dizzy.'

Rivers tried not to say, but said, 'It's not really a good idea with
asthma, you know.'

'You think it might shorten my life? Do you know how long the
average officer lasts in France?'

'Yes. Three months. You're not in France.'

Prior dragged on the cigarette and, momentarily, closed his eyes. He
looked a bit like the boys you saw on street corners in the East End.
That same air of knowing the price of everything. Rivers drew the file
towards him. 'We left you in billets at Beauvois.'

'Yes. We were there, oh, I think about four days and then we were
rushed back into the line. We attacked the morning of the night we
moved up.'

'Date?'

'April the 23rd.'

Rivers looked up. It was unusual for Prior to be so accurate.

'St George's Day. The CO toasted him in the mess. I remember
because it was so bloody stupid.'

'You were in the casualty clearing station on the . . .' He glanced at
the file. '29th. So that leaves us with nine days unaccounted for.'

'Yes, and I'm afraid I can't help you with any of them.'

'Do you remember the attack?'

'Yes. It was exactly like any other attack.'

Rivers waited. Prior looked so hostile that at first Rivers thought he
would refuse to go on, but then he raised the cigarette to his lips, and
said, 'All right. Your watch is brought back by a runner, having been
synchronized at headquarters.' A long pause. 'You wait, you try to


7'
R F. G F N F. R A The I O N

I

m

calm down anybody who's obviously shitting himself or on the verge      ^

of throwing up. You hope you won't do either of those things yourself.
Then you start the count down: ten, nine, eight ... so on. You blow
the whistle. You climb the ladder. Then you double through a gap in
the wire, lie flat, wait for everybody else to get out -- those that are left,
there's already quite a heavy toll -- and then you stand up. And you
start walking. Not at the double. Normal walking speed.' Prior started
to smile. 'In a straight line. Across open country. In broad daylight.
Towards a line of machine-guns.' He shook his head. 'Oh, and of
course you're being shelled all the way.'

'What did you/ee/?'

Prior tapped the ash off his cigarette. 'You always want to know what I felt.'

'Well, yes. You're describing this attack as if it were a -- a slightly
ridiculous event in --'

'Not "slightly". Slightly, I did not say.'

'All right, an extremely ridiculous event - in somebody else's life.'

'Perhaps that's how it felt.'

'Was it?' He gave Prior time to answer. 'I think you're capable of a
great deal of detachment, but you'd have to be inhuman to be as
detached as that.'

'All right. It felt. . .' Prior started to smile again. 'Sexy.'

Rivers raised a hand to his mouth.

'You see?' Prior said, pointing to the hand. 'You ask me how it felt
and when I tell you, you don't believe me.'

Rivers lowered his hand. 'I haven't said I don't believe you. I was
waiting for you to go on.'

'You know those men who lurk around in bushes waiting to jump
out on unsuspecting ladies and - er-um - display their equipment? It
felt a bit like that. A bit like I imagine that feels. I wouldn't like you to
think I had any personal experience.'

'And was that your only feeling?'

'Apart from terror, yes.' He looked amused. 'Shall we get back to
"inhuman detachment"?'

'If you like.'

Prior laughed. 'I think it suits us both better, don't you?'

Rivers let him continue. This had been Prior's attitude throughout
the three weeks they'd spent trying to recover his memories of France.
He seemed to be saying, 'All right. You can make me dredge up the
horrors, you can make me remember the deaths, but you will never


72
REGENERATION


make me feel.' Rivers tried to break down the detachment, to get to
the emotion, but he knew that, confronted by the same task, he would
have tackled it in exactly the same way as Prior.

'You keep up a kind of chanting. "Not so fast. Steady on the left!"
Designed to avoid bunching. Whether it works or not depends on the
ground. Where we were, it was absolutely pitted with shell-holes and
the lines got broken up straight away. I looked back . . .' He stopped,
and reached for another cigarette. 'I looked back and the ground was
covered with wounded. Lying on top of each other, writhing. Like
fish in a pond that's drying out. I wasn't frightened at all. I just felt this
. . . amazing burst of exultation. Then I heard a shell coming. And the
next thing I knew I was in the air, fluttering down . . .' He waved his
fingers in a descending arc. 'I know it can't've been like that, but that's
what I remember. When I came to, I was in a crater with about half a
dozen of the men. I couldn't move. I thought at first I was paralysed,
but then I managed to move my feet. I told them to get the brandy out
of my pocket, and we passed that round. Then a man appeared on the
other side of the crater, right at the rim, and, instead of crawling
down, he put his hands to his sides, like this, and slid down on his
bottom. And suddenly everybody burst out laughing.'

'You say "came to"? Do you know how long you were
unconscious?'

'No idea.'

'But you were able to speak?'

'Yes, I told them to get the brandy.'

'And then?'

'Then we waited till dark and made a dash for the line. They saw us
just as we got to our wire. Two men wounded.'

'There was no talk of sending you to a CCS when you got back?'

'No, I was organizing other people there.' He added bitterly, 'There
was no talk of sending anybody anywhere. Normally you go back
after heavy losses, but we didn't. They just left us there.'
'And you don't remember anything else?'

'No. And I have tried.'

'Yes, I'm sure you have.'

A long silence. 'I suppose you haven't heard from the CO?'

'No, I'd tell you if I had.'

Prior sat brooding for a while. 'Well, I suppose we go on waiting.'
He leant forward to stub his cigarette out. 'You know, you once told
me I had to win.' He shook his head. 'You're the one who has to win.'


73

REGENERATION


'This may conic as a shock, Mr Prior, but I had been rather assuming
we were on the same side.'

Prior smiled. 'This may come as a shock, Dr Rivers, but I had been rather 
assuming that we were not.'

Silence. Rivers caught and held a sigh. 'That does make the relationship
of doctor and patient rather difficult.'

Prior shrugged. Obviously he didn't think that was his problem.
'You think you know what happened, don't you?' Rivers said.

'I've told you I don't remember.'

The antagonism was startling. They might've been back at the beginning,
when it had been almost impossible to get a civil word out of
him. 'I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't suggesting you
knew, only that you might have a theory.'

Prior shook his head. 'No. No theory.'


A short, dark-haired man sidled round the door, blinking in the sudden
blaze of sunlight. Sassoon, sitting on the bed, looked up from the golf
club he'd been cleaning. 'Yes?'

'I've b-brought these.'

A stammer. Not as bad as some, but bad enough. Sassoon exerted
himself to be polite. 'What is it? I can't see.'

Books. His book. Five copies, no less. 'My God, a reader.'

'I wondered if you'd b-be k-kind enough to s-sign them?'

'Yes, of course.' Sassoon put the golf club down and reached for his
pen. He could have dispatched the job in a few moments, but he
sensed that his visitor wanted to talk, and he had after all bought Jive 
copies. Sassoon was curious. 'Why five? Has the War Office put it on a
reading list?'

'They're f-for m-my f-family.'

Oh, dear. Sassoon transferred himself from bed to table and opened
the first book. 'What name shall I write?'

'Susan Owen. M-y m-mother.'

Sassoon began to write. Paused. 'Are you . . . quite sure your mother wants to 
be told that "Bert's gone syphilitic?" I had trouble getting
them to print that.'

'It w-won't c-come as a sh-shock.'

'Won't it?' One could only speculate on the nature of Mrs Owen's
previous acquaintance with Bert.

'I t-tell her everything. In m-my 1letters.'

'Good heavens,' Sassoon said lightly, and turned back to the book.


74

I
R F. O F. N F R A The I O N


Owen looked down at the back of Sassoon's neck, where a thin line
of khaki was just visible beneath the purple silk of his dressing gown.
'Don't you?

Sassoon opened his mouth and shut it again. 'My brother died at
Gallipoli,' he said, at last. 'I think my mother has enough on her plate
without any searing revelations from me.'

'I s-suppose she m-must b-be c-concerned about your b-being here.'

'Oh, I don't think so. On the contrary. I believe the thought of my
insanity is one of her few consolations.' He glanced up, briefly. 'Better mad 
than a pacifist.' When Owen continued to look blank, he added,
'You do know why I'm here?'

'Yes.'

'And what do you think about that?'

'I agreed with every w-word.'

Sassoon smiled. 'So did my friend Graves.' He opened the next
book. 'Who's this one for?'

Owen, feeding the names, would have given anything to say one
sentence without stammering. No hope of that -- he was far too nervous.
Everything about Sassoon intimidated him. His status as a published
poet, his height, his good looks, the clipped aristocratic voice,
sometimes quick, sometimes halting, but always cold, the bored expression,
the way he had of not looking at you when you spoke -- shyness,
perhaps, but it seemed like arrogance. Above all, his reputation for
courage. Owen had his own reasons for being sensitive about that.

Sassoon reached the last book. Owen felt the meeting begin to slip
away from him. Rather desperately, he said, 'I 1-liked "The D-Death
B-Bed" b-best.' And suddenly he relaxed. It didn't matter what this Sassoon 
thought about him, since the real Sassoon was in the poems.
He quoted, from memory, ' "He's young; he hated War, how should
he die/When cruel old campaigners win safe through?/But death
replied: 'I choose him.' So he went." That's beautiful.'

Sassoon paused in his signing. 'Yes, I -- I was quite pleased with that.'

'Oh, and "The Redeemer". "He faced me, reeling in his weariness,/
Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear./I say that He was
Christ, who wrought to bless . . ."' He broke off. 'I've been wanting
to write that for three years.'

'Perhaps you should be glad you didn't.'

The light faded from Owen's face. 'Sorry?'

'Well, don't you think it's rather easily said? "I say that He was
Christ"?'


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'You ni-mcan you d-didn't ni-incan it?'

'Oh, I meant it. The book isn't putting one point of view, it's
charting the - the evolution of a point of view. That's probably the first
poem that even attempts to look at the war realistically. And that one
doesn't go nearly far enough.' He paused. 'The fact is Christ isn't on
record as having lobbed many Mills bombs.'

'No, I s-see what you m-mean. I've been thinking about that quite a
b-bit recently.'

Sassoon scarcely heard him. 'I got so sick of it in the end. All those
Calvaries at crossroads just sitting there waiting to be turned into
symbols. I knew a man once, Potter his name was. You know the
miraculous crucifix stories? "Shells falling all around, but the figure of Our
Lord was spared"? Well, Potter was so infuriated by them he decided to
start a one-man campaign. Whenever he saw an undamaged crucifix,
he used it for target practice. You could hear him for miles. "ONE,
TWO, THREE, FOUR, Bastard on the Cross, FIRE!" There
weren't many miraculous crucifixes in Potter's section of the front.' He
hesitated. 'But perhaps I shouldn't be saying this? I mean for all I
know, you're --'

'I don't know what I am. But I do know I -wouldn't want a f-faith
that couldn't face the facts.'

Sassoon became aware that Owen was standing at his elbow, almost
like a junior officer. 'Why don't you sit down?' he said, waving him
towards the bed. 'And tell me your name. I take it this one's for you?'

'Yes. Wilfred. Wilfred Owen.'

Sassoon blew on his signature and closed the book. 'You say you've
been thinking about it?'

Owen looked diffident. 'Yes.'

To any effect? I mean, did you reach any conclusions?'

'Only that if I were going to call myself a Christian, I'd have to call
myself a pacifist as well. I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a
C-Christian and . . . and j-just leave out the awkward bits.'

'You'll never make a bishop.'

'No, well, I think I can live with that.'

'And do you call yourself a pacifist?'

A long pause. 'No. Do you?'

'No.'

'It's funny, you know, I never thought about it at all in France.'

'No, well, you don't. Too busy, too tired.' Sassoon smiled. 'Too healthy.'


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'It's not just that, though, is it? Sometimes when you're alone, in the
trenches, I mean, at night you get the sense of something ancient. As if
the trenches had always been there. You know one trench we held, it
had skulls in the side. You looked back along and . . . Like mushrooms.
And do you know, it was actually easier to believe they were men
from Marlborough's army than to to to think they'd been alive two
years ago. It's as if all other wars had somehow . . . distilled themselves
into this war, and that makes it something you . . . almost can't challenge.
It's like a very deep voice saying, Run along, little man. Be
thankful if you survive.'

For a moment the nape of Sassoon's neck crawled as it had the first
time Campbell talked about German spies; but this was not madness. 'I
had a similar experience. Well, I don't know whether it is similar. I
was going up with the rations one night and I saw the limbers against
the skyline, and the flares going up. What you see every night. Only I
seemed to be seeing it from the future. A hundred years from now
they'll still be ploughing up skulls. And I seemed to be in that time and
looking back. I think I saw our ghosts.'

Silence. They'd gone further than either of them had intended, and
for a moment they didn't know how to get back. Gradually, they
stirred, they looked round, at sunlight streaming over beds and chairs,
at Sassoon's razor glinting on the washstand, its handle smeared with
soap. Sassoon looked at his watch. 'I'm going to be late for golf.'

Immediately Owen stood up. 'Well, thanks for these,' he said, taking
the books. He laughed. 'Thanks for writing it.'

Sassoon followed him to the door. 'Did you say you wrote?'

'I didn't, but I do.'

'Poetry?'

'Yes. Nothing in print yet. Oh, which reminds me. I'm editor of the Hydra. The 
hospital magazine? I was wondering if you could let us
have something. It needn't be '

'Yes, I'll look something out.' Sassoon opened the door. 'Give me a
few days. You could bring your poems.'

This was said with such determined courtesy and such transparent
lack of enthusiasm that Owen burst out laughing. 'No, I '

'No, I mean it.'

'All right.' Owen was still laughing. 'They are quite short.'

'No, well, it doesn't lend itself to epics, does it?'

'Oh, they're not about the war.' He hesitated. 'I don't write about
that.'


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'Why ever not?'

'I s-suppose I've always thought of p-poetry as the opposite of all
that. The ugliness.' Owen was struggling to articulate a point of view he
was abandoning even as he spoke. 'S-Something to to t-take refuge in.'

Sassoon nodded. 'Fair enough.' He added mischievously, 'Though it
does seem a bit like having a faith that daren't face the facts.' He saw
Owen's expression change. 'Look, it doesn't matter what they're about.
Bring them anyway.'

'Yes, I will. Thank you.'


Anderson, following Sassoon into the bar of the golf club, knew he
owed him an apology. At the seventeenth hole, afraid he was losing,
he'd missed a vital shot and in the heat of the moment had not merely
sworn at Sassoon, but actually raised the club and threatened to hit him
with it. Sassoon had looked startled, even alarmed, but he'd laughed it
off. At the eighteenth hole, he'd been careful to ask Anderson's advice
about which iron he should use. Now, he turned to Anderson and said,
'Usual?'

Anderson nodded. The trouble was, Anderson thought, it looked so
much like bad sportsmanship, whereas in reality the apology was being
delayed, not by any unwillingness on his part to admit he was wrong,
but by the extent of the horror he felt at his own behaviour. He'd
behaved like a spoilt child. So do something about it, he told himself.
'Sorry about that,' he said, nodding towards the course.

' 'S all right.' Sassoon turned from the bar and smiled. 'We all have
bad days.'

'Here's your half-crown.'

Sassoon grinned and pocketed it. He was thinking, as he turned back
to the bar, that if the club had landed on his head he would have been
far more seriously injured than he'd been at Arras. He conjured Rivers
up in his mind and asked, What was that you were saying about 'safety'?
Nothing more dangerous than playing golf with lunatics. 'Lunatic' was a
word Sassoon would never have dared use to Rivers's face, so it gave
him an additional pleasure to yell it at his image.

They took their drinks, found a quiet corner, and began their usual
inquest on the game. Under cover of the familiar chat, Anderson
watched Sassoon -- a good-looking, rather blank face, big hands curved
round his glass -- and. thought how little he knew about him. Or
wanted to know. It was a matter of tacit agreement that they talked
about nothing but golf. Anderson had read the Declaration, but he


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wouldn't have dreamt of discussing Sassoon's attitude to the war,
mainly because some return of intimacy would then have been
required. He might have had to disclose his own reasons for being at
Craiglockhart. His horror of blood. He had a momentary picture of
the way Sassoon's head would have looked if he'd hit him, and his
hand tightened on the glass. 'You're still not taking your time,' he said.
'You're rushing your shots.'

There were other reasons too why he didn't want to talk about the
war. Inevitably such talk would have strengthened his own doubts,
and they were bad enough already. He even dreamt about the bloody
war, not just nightmares, he was used to those; he'd dreamt he was
speaking at a debate on whether it should go on or not. In his dream
he'd spoken in favour of continuing to the point of German collapse,
but Rivers's analysis had left him in no doubt as to how far his horror
at the whole business went. He felt safe with Rivers, because he knew
Rivers shared the horror, and shared too the conviction that, in spite of
everything, it had to go on.

'I don't know whether to spend that half-crown or frame it,' Sassoon
was saying. 'I don't suppose I'll ever win another.'

That was to make Anderson feel better about losing his temper on
the course. Sassoon was a pleasant companion, there was no doubt
about that. He was friendly, modest. But the Declaration hadn't been
modest. What had chiefly struck Anderson about that was its arrogance,
its totally outrageous assumption that everybody who disagreed with
him was 'callous'. Do you think I'm callous? he wanted to ask. Do you
think Rivers is callous? But there was no point getting worked up.
Rivers would soon sort him out.

'I shan't be seeing you tomorrow, shall I?' Sassoon was saying.
'Your wife's coming up.'

'No, I'm afraid she's had to cancel. So it's business as usual.' He took
Sassoon's empty glass and stood up. 'You can try to make it five bob, if
you like.'


Prior watched the amber lights winking in his beer. He was sitting
in the shadowy corner of a pub in some sleazy district of Edinburgh.
He didn't know where he was. He'd walked miles that evening, not
admitting even to himself what he was looking for, and gradually
the winding, insidious streets had led him deeper and deeper into a
neighbourhood where washing hung, grey-white, from stacked
balconies, and the smell of steak frying reminded him of home.


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Remembering the smell, his stomach rumbled. He'd had nothing to
eat all evening, except a packet of peanuts. Crumbs of salt still clung to
his lips, stinging the cracks where the skin had dried during his asthma
attack. It was worth it, though, just to sit quietly, to listen to voices
that didn't stammer, to have his eyes freed from the ache of khaki.

No theory. He'd lied to Rivers about that. It was a point of honour
with him to lie to Rivers at least once during every meeting. He
drained his glass and went out into the night.

A little way down the street was a cafe. He'd passed it on his way to
the pub and been tempted to go in, but the door had opened and the
breath of hot, damp, dirty, dishwater-smelling air had decided him
against it. Now, though, he was too hungry to care. He went in,
noticing how the inner windows dripped from condensation, how the
damp air insinuated itself into the spaces between his uniform and his
skin. A short silence fell. Nobody in an officer's uniform was likely to
be inconspicuous or welcome here. He would eat something, fish and
chips, quickly and then go.

A group of women was sitting at the next table. Three of them were
young, one older, thirty-five, forty perhaps, with blackened stumps
for teeth. As far as he could make out from the conversation her name
was Lizzie, and the others were Madge, the blonde, pretty one, Betty,
who was dark and thin, and Sarah, who had her back to him. Since
they all had a slightly yellow tinge to their skin, he assumed they were
munitions workers. Munitioneffes, as the newspapers liked to call them.
Lizzie was keeping the younger girls entertained with a string of stories.

'There's this lass and she's a bit simple and she lived next door to a
pro -- well you know what a pro is.' Lizzie glanced at him and lowered
her voice. 'So she's standing at the door this day, and the pro's coming
up the street, you know, dressed to death. So she says, "Eeh," she says,
"you're always lovely dressed." She says, "You've got beautiful
clothes." And she says, "I love your hats." So the pro says, "Well, why
don't you get yourself down the town like I do?" She says, "If a man
winks at you, wink back and go with him and let him have what he
wants and charge him 7/6. And go to R&K Modes and get yourself a
hat." So the next day the pro's coming up the street again. "Hello."
"Hello." She says, "D' y' get a hat?" She says, "Nah." "Well, did you
not do as I telled you?" She says, "Why of course I did." She says, "I
went down the town and there was a man winked at us and I winked
back. He says, 'Howay over the Moor.'" So she says, "I gans over the
Moor with him," she says, "and I let him have what he wanted. He


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says, 'How much is that?' I says, '7/6.' He says, 'Hadaway and shite,'
and when I come back he'd gone." '

The girls shrieked with laughter. He looked at them again. The one
called Madge was very pretty, but there was no hope of winkling her
out of the group, and he thought he might as well be moving on. As
soon as his meal arrived, he began stuffing limp chips and thickly
battered fish into his mouth, wiping the grease away on the back of his
hand.

'You'll get hiccups.'

He looked up. It was Sarah, the one who'd been sitting with her
back to him. 'You'll have to give us a surprise, then, won't you?'

'Drop me key down your back if you like.'

'That's nose bleeds, Sarah,' Betty said.

'She knows what it is,' said Lizzie.

Madge said, 'Hiccups, you're supposed to drink from the other side
of the cup.'

She and Prior stared at each other across the table.

'But it's a con, isn't it?' he said. 'You can't do it.'

' 'Course you can.'

'Go on, then, let's see you.'

She dipped her small, straight nose into her cup, lapped, spluttered
and came up laughing and wiping her chin. Betty, obviously jealous,
gave her a dig in the ribs. 'Hey up you, you're gonna gerrus slung out.'

The cafe owner was eyeing them from behind the till, slowly polishing
a glass on a distinctly grubby-looking tea towel. The girls went
back to their tea, bursting into minor explosions of giggles, their
shoulders shaking, while Prior turned back and finished his meal. He
was aware of Sarah beside him. She had very heavy, very thick, dark
brown hair, but all over the surface, in a kind of halo, were other hairs,
auburn, copper, chestnut. He'd never seen hair like that before. He
looked at her, and she turned around and stared at him, a cool, amused
stare from greenish eyes. He said, 'Would you like a drink?'

She looked at her cup.

'No, I meant a proper drink.'

'Pubs round here don't let women in.'

'Isn't there a hotel?'

'Well, there's the Cumberland, but . . .'

The other women looked at each other. Lizzie said, 'Howay, lasses, I
think our Sarah's clicked.'

The three of them got up, said a good-natured 'goodnight' and


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tripped out of the cafe, only bursting into giggles again after they'd
reached the pavement.

'Shall we go, then?' said Prior.

Sarah looked at him. 'Aye, all right.'

Outside, she turned to him. 'I still don't know your name.'

'Prior,' he said automatically.

She burst out laughing. 'Don't you lot have Christian names?'

'Billy.' He wanted to say, and I'm not 'you lot'.

'Mine's Sarah. Sarah Lumb.' She held out her hand to him in a
direct, almost boyish way. It intrigued him, since nothing else about
her was boyish.

'Well, Sarah Lumb, lead on.'

Her preferred drink was port and lemon. Prior was startled at the
rate she knocked them back. A flush spread across her cheeks in a
different place from the rouge, so that she looked as if her face had slid
6ut of focus. She worked in a factory, she said, making detonators.
Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, but she liked the work, she said,
and it was well paid. 'Fifty bob a week.'

'I suppose that's something.'

'Too bloody right it is. I was earning ten bob before the war.'

He thought what the detonators she made could do to flesh and
bone, and his mind bulged as a memory threatened to surface. 'You're
not Scottish, though, are you?'

'No, Geordie. Well, what you A call Geordie.'

'Did your dad come up looking for work?'

'No, they're still down there. I'm in lodgings down the road.'

Ah, he thought.

' "Ah" he thinks.' She looked at him, amused and direct. 'I think
you're a bad lad.'

'No, I'm not. Nobody bad could be that transparent.'

'That's true.'

'Haven't you got a boyfriend?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't think you'd be sitting here if you had.'

'Oh, I might be one of these two-timing lasses, you never know.'
She looked down into her glass. 'No, I haven't got one.'

'Why not? Can't all be blind in Scotland.'

'Perhaps I'm not on the market.'

He didn't know what to make of her, but then he was out of touch
with women. They seemed to have changed so much during the war,


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to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same
period had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space.

'I did have one,' she said. 'Loos.'

Odd, he thought, getting up and going to the bar to buy more
drinks, that one word should be enough. But then why not? Language
ran out on you, in the end, the names were left to say it all. Mons,
Loos, Ypres, the Somme. Arras. He paid and carried the drinks back to
their table. He thought that he didn't want to hear about the boyfriend,
and that he was probably going to anyway. He was right there.

'I was in service at the time. It didn't . . .' Her voice became very
brisk. 'It didn't seem to sink in. Then his mate came to see me. You
weren't supposed to have followers. "Followers" -- that's how old
fashioned she was. Especially soldiers. "Oh my deah." So anyway he
come to the front door and . . .' She waved her hand languidly. 'I sent
him away. Then I nipped down the basement and let him in the back.'
She took a swig of the port. 'It was our gas,' she said, red-lidded. 'Did you 
know that?'

'Yes.'

'Our own bloody gas. After he'd gone, you know, I couldn't believe
it. I just walked round and round the table and it was like . . . You
know when you get a tune stuck in your head? I just kept on thinking,
our gas. Anyway after a bit she come downstairs, and she says,
"Where's tea?" I says, "Well, you can see for yourself. It's not ready." 
We-ell. First one thing was said and then another and in the end I did, I
let her have it. She says, "You'd be making a great mistake to throw
this job away, you know, Sarah." I says, "Oh, aye?" She says, "We
don't say 'aye', Sarah, we say 'yes'." I says, "All right," I says, "'yes'.
But 'aye' or 'yes', it's still ten bob a week and you put it where the
monkey put the nuts." Same night I was packing me bags. No testimonial.
And you know what that would've meant before the war?' She
looked him up and down. 'No, I don't suppose you do. Anyway, I
turned up at home and me Mam says, "I've no sympathy, our Sarah,"
she says. "You should have fixed him while you had the chance," she
says. "And made sure of the pension. Our Cynthia had her wits about
her," she says. "Why couldn't you?" And of course our Cynthia's sat
there. Would you believe in weeds? I thought, aw to hell with this.
Anyway, a couple of days after, I got on talking to Betty - that's the
dark girl you saw me with just now - and we decided to give this a
go.'

'I'm glad you did.'


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She brooded for a while over her empty glass. 'You know, me Mam
says there's no such thing as love between men and women. Love for
your bairns, yes. Love for a man? No.' She turned to him, almost
aggressively. 'What do you think?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, that makes two of us, then, 'cause I'm buggered if I
do.'

'But you loved -'

'Johnny? I can't remember what he looked like. Sometimes his face
pops into me mind, like when I'm thinking about something else, but
when I want to see it, I can't.' She smiled. 'That's the trouble with port
and lemon, isn't it? Truth pours out.'

He took the hint and bought another.

By the time they left the pub she'd drunk enough to need his arm.

'Which way's your lodgings?'

She giggled. 'Won't do you any good,' she said. 'My landlady's a
dragon. Fifty times worse than me Mam.'

'Shall we go for a walk, then? I don't fancy saying goodnight, just
yet, do you?'

'All right.'

They turned away from the lighted pavements, into the darkness of
a side street. He put his arm around her, inching his hand further up
until his fingers rested against the curve of her breast. She was tall for a
woman, and they fitted together, shoulder and hip. He hardly had to
shorten his stride. As they walked, she glanced down frequently at her
shoes and stockings, admiring herself. He guessed she more usually
wore boots.

They came upon a church with a small churchyard around it. Gravestones
leant together at angles in the shadow of the trees, like people
gossiping. 'Shall we go in there for a bit?'

He opened the gate for her and they went in, into the darkness
under the trees, treading on something soft and crunchy. Pine needles,
perhaps. At the church door they turned and followed the path round,
till they came to a tall, crumbling, ivy-covered wall. There, in the
shadows, he pulled her towards him. He got her jacket and blouse
unbuttoned and felt for her breast. The nipple hardened against his
palm, and he laughed under his breath. She started to say something,
but he covered her mouth with his own, he didn't want her to talk, he
didn't want her to tell him things. He would have preferred not even
to know her name. Just flesh against flesh in the darkness and then
nothing.


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'I know what you want,' she said, pulling away from him.

Instantly he let her go. '/ know what I want. What's wrong with that'? I've 
never forced anybody.' He turned away from her and sat on
a tombstone. 'And I don't go on about it either.'

'Then you're a man in a million.'

'I know.'

'Big-headed bugger.'

'Don't I even get a cuddle?' He patted the tombstone. 'No harm in
that.'

She came and sat beside him, and after a while he got his arms
around her again. But he didn't feel the same way about it. Now, even
as he lowered his head to her breast, he was wondering whether
he wanted to play this particular game. Whether it was worth it.
He tugged gently at her nipple, and felt her thighs loosen. Instantly,
his doubts vanished. He pressed her back on to the tombstone and
moved on top of her. Cradling her head on his left arm, he began the
complicated business of raising her skirts, pulling down her drawers,
unbuttoning his breeches, all while trying to maintain their position
on a too-short and sloping tombstone. At the last moment she cried
'No-o-o' and shoved him hard off the tombstone into the long grass.
He sat for a while, his back against the stone, picking bits of lichen
off his tunic. After a while he yawned and said, 'Short-arsed little
buggers, the Scots.'

She looked down at the tombstone, which did seem rather small.
'Oh, I don't know. Everybody was shorter in them days.' You could
just make out the word 'Beloved', but everything else was covered in
lichen or crumbled away. She traced the word with her fingertip. 'I
wonder what they think.'

'Down there? Glad to see a bit of life, I should think. Not that
they've seen much.'

She didn't reply. He turned to look at her. Her hair had come down,
way past her shoulders, he was glad she didn't wear it short, and there
was still that amazing contrast of the dark brown velvety mass and its
halo of copper wire. He was being stupid. She'd let him have it in the
end, and the more he bellyached about it now, the longer he'd have to
wait. He said, 'Come on, one kiss, and I'll walk you home.'

'Hm.'

'No, I mean it.'

He gave her a teasingly chaste kiss, making sure he was the first to
pull away. Then he helped her dust down her skirt and walked her


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m

back to her lodgings. On the way she insisted they stop in the doorway
of a shop, and she crammed her hair up into her hat, with the help of
the few hairpins she'd managed to retrieve. 'There'd be eyebrows
raised if I went in like this.'

'Can I see you again?'

'You know where I live. Or you will do.'

'I don't know your times off.'

'Sunday.'

Till come over on Sunday, then, shall I? If I come mid morning, we
could have a bite to eat in Edinburgh and then go somewhere on the
tram.'

She looked doubtful, but the thought of being collected from her
lodgings by an officer was too much for her. 'All right.'

They walked on. She stopped outside the door and raised her face.
Oh, no, he thought. No fumbling on doorsteps. He lowered his head
until his forehead rested against hers. 'Goodnight, Sarah Lumb.'

'Goodnight, Billy Prior.'

After a few paces he turned and looked back. She was standing on
the step, watching him walk away. He raised his hand, and she waved
slightly. Then he turned and walked briskly on, looking at his watch
and thinking, Christ. Even if he found a taxi immediately he still couldn't
be back at Craiglockhart before the main doors were locked. Oh well,
he thought, I'll just have to face it.


NINE


'Aren't you going to start?'

'I imagine Major Bryce has dealt with the matter?'

'You could say. He's confined me to the hospital for a fortnight.'

Rivers made no comment.

'Don't you think that's rather severe?'

'It wasn't a simple matter of being late back, was it? Matron says she
saw you in town, and you were not wearing your hospital badge.'

'I wasn't wearing the badge because I was looking for a girl. Which
-- as you may or may not know -- is not made easier by going around with
a badge stuck on your chest saying I AM A LOONY.'


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'I gather you also made some rather disrespectful remarks about
Matron. Everything from the size of her bosom to the state of her
hymen. If you make remarks like that to the CO, what do you think is
going to happen?'

Prior didn't reply, though a muscle throbbed in his jaw. Rivers
looked at the pale, proud, wintry face and thought oh God, it's going
to be another one of those.

Prior said, 'Aren't you going to ask me if I got one?'

'One what?'

'Girl. Woman.' When Rivers didn't immediately reply, Prior added,
' Wo-manT

'No, I wasn't going to ask.'

'You amaze me. I should've thought that was par for the course.'

Rivers waited.

'Questions. On and on and bloody on.'

'Would you like to leave it for today?'

'No.'

'You're sure?'

'Quite sure.'

'All right. We'd got to the time immediately following the April
23rd attack. Have you made any progress beyond that?'

'No.'

'Nothing at all?'

'No.' Prior's hands were gripping the arms of his chair. 'I don't
want to talk about this.'

Rivers decided to humour him. 'What do you want to talk about?'

'Something you said earlier on. It's been bothering me ever since.
You said officers don't suffer from mutism.'

'It's rare.'

'How many cases?'

'At Craiglockhart? You, and one other. At Maghull, where I was
treating private soldiers, it was by far the commonest symptom.'

'Why?'

'I imagine . . . Mutism seems to spring from a conflict between wanting to say 
something, and knowing that if you do say it the consequences
will be disastrous. So you resolve it by making it physically
impossible for yourself to speak. And for the private soldier the consequences
of speaking his mind are always going to be far worse than
they would be for an officer. What you tend to get in officers is
stammering. And it's not just mutism. All the physical symptoms:


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paralysis, blindness, deafness. They're all common in private soldiers
and rare in officers. It's almost as if for the . . . the labouring classes
illness has to be physical. They can't take their condition seriously
unless there's a physical symptom. And there are other differences as
well. Officers' dreams tend to be more elaborate. The men's dreams
are much more a matter of simple wish fulfilment. You know, they
dream they've been sent back to France, but on the day they arrive
peace is declared. That sort of thing.'

'I think I'd rather have their dreams than mine.'

'How do you know?' Rivers said. 'You don't remember your
dreams.'

'You still haven't said why.'

'I suppose it's just a matter of officers having a more complex
mental life.'

Prior reacted as if he'd been stung. 'Are you serious? You honestly
believe that that gaggle of noodle-brained half-wits down there has a
complex mental life? Oh, Rivers.'

'I'm not saying it's universally true, only that it's generally true.
Simply as a result of officers receiving a different and, for the most
part, more prolonged education.'

'The public schools.'

'Yes. The public schools.'

Prior raised his head. 'How do I fit into that?'

'We-ell, it's interesting that you were mute and that you're one of
the very few people in the hospital who doesn't stammer.'

'It's even more interesting that you do.'

Rivers was taken aback. 'That's d-different.'

'How is it different? Other than that you're on that side of the desk?'
He saw Rivers hesitate. 'No, I'm not being awkward. I'm genuinely
interested.'

'It's usually thought that neurasthenic stammers arise from the same
kind of conflict as mutism, a conflict between wanting to speak and
knowing that w-what you've got to say is not acceptable. Lifelong
stammerers? Well. Nobody really knows. It may even be genetic.'

Prior smiled. 'Now that is lucky, isn't it? Lucky for you, I mean.
Because if your stammer was the same as theirs -- you might actually
have to sit down and work out what it is you've spent fifty years
trying not to say.'

'Is that the end of my appointment for the day, Mr Prior?'

Prior smiled.


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'You know one day you're going to have to accept the fact dial
you're in this hospital because you're ill. Not me. Not the CO. Not
the kitchen porter. You.'

After Prior had gone, Rivers sat for a while, half amused, half
irritated. Now that his attention had been drawn to his stammer, it
would plague him at intervals throughout the day. Bugger Prior, he
thought. To be absolutely accurate, b-b-b-bugger Prior.

Prior had left slightly early, so Rivers had a few minutes before his
next appointment. He decided to take a turn in the grounds. The grass
was silvery with dew -- his footsteps showed up dark along the path
he'd come -- but here and there the ground was beginning to steam. He
sat on a bench under the trees, and watched two patients carrying
scythes come round the corner of the building and run down the
grassy slope that divided the gravel drive from the tennis courts. They
looked, Rivers thought, almost comically symbolic: Time and Death
invading the Arcadian scene. Nothing symbolic about the scythes,
though. The blades over their shoulders glinted a wicked blue-grey.
You could only wonder at an administration that confiscated cutthroat
razors and then issued the patients with these. They set to work cutting
the long grass by the hedges. There was a great deal of laughter and
clumsiness at first, and a not a few false starts, before their bodies bent
into the rhythm of the task. Moths, disturbed from their daytime sleep,
flickered all around them.

One took off his Sam Browne belt and then tunic, shirt and tie,
casting them carelessly aside, and then went back to his scything, his
dangling braces describing wide arcs around him as he swung the
blade. His body was very pale, with a line round the neck, dividing
white from reddish brown. The tunic had landed on the hedge, one
sleeve raised as if beckoning. The other flung down his scythe and did
the same. Work went more quickly now. Soon there was a gratifyingly
large area of mown grass for them to look back on. They stood leaning
on the scythes, admiring their work, and then one of them dived into
the cut grass, winnowing his way through it, obviously excited by it in
the way dogs sometimes are. He lay on his back, panting. The other
man came across, said, 'Silly bugger,' and started kicking the grass all
over him.

Rivers turned and saw Patterson - the Head of Office Administration
-- making his way at a steady pace down the slope to deliver the
inevitable reprimand. King's regulations. No officer must appear in
public with any garment missing. Patterson spoke to them, then turned


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away. Slowly, they reached for their uniforms, pulled khaki shirts and
tunics on to sweating bodies, buckled belts. It had to be done, though
it seemed to Rivers that the scything went more slowly after that, and
there was less laughter, which seemed a pity.


That night Rivers worked late, compiling lists of men to be boarded at
the end of August. This was the most difficult task of any month, since
it involved deciding which patients were fit to return to duty. In
theory, the decision to return a man to service was taken by the Board,
but since his recommendations were rarely, if ever, questioned, in
practice his report determined the outcome. He was beginning to
work on the first of these reports when there was a tap on the door. He
called, 'Come in!'

Prior came into the room.

'Good evening,' Rivers said.

'Good evening. I
came to say I'm sorry about this morning.'

The day had been so horrific in so many ways -- culminating in a
three-hour meeting of the hospital management committee -- that
Rivers had to grope for the memory. He said. 'That's all right.'

'It was stupid. Going on like that.'

'Oh, I don't know. We just caught each other at a bad moment.'

Prior lingered a few feet away from the desk. 'Why don't you sit
down?' Rivers said.

'You must be tired.'

'Tired of paperwork.'

Prior's glance took in the list of names. 'The Boards.'

'The Boards.' He glanced at Prior. 'Not you this time.'

'Not enough progress.'

Rivers didn't immediately reply. He was watching Prior, noticing
the pallor, the circles round the eyes. He had shadows under the
shadows now. 'You have made progress. You've recovered almost all
your memory and you no longer lose your voice.'

'You must wish I did.'

Rivers smiled. 'Don't exaggerate, Mr Prior. We both know if you really wanted 
to be offensive, you could do a hundred times better than
you did this morning.' He waited for a reply. 'Couldn't you?'

Prior produced a curious rippling motion -- half shrug, half flounce
-- and turned away. After a moment he looked sideways at Rivers. 'I
did once think of asking you if you ever fucked any of your
headhunters.'


90

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'What stopped you?'

'I thought it was your business.'

Rivers pretended to consider the matter. That's true.'

'There's no point trying to be offensive, is there, if that's the only
response you get?'

'You don't really want to be. You've always made a lot of noise about stepping 
over the line, but you've never actually done it.' Rivers
smiled. 'Except just now, of course. And that was incredibly
indirect.'

A short silence. Prior said, 'I wish I could go out. No, it's all right,
I'm not asking. I'm just saying I wish I could. The nightmares get
worse when I'm stuck indoors.' He waited. This is where you ask
about the nightmares and I say I don't remember.'

'I know.'

Prior smiled. 'You never believed me, did you?'

'Should I have done?'

'No.'

'Do you want to talk about them now?'

'I can't. Look, they're just. . .' He laughed. '"Standard issue battle
nightmares. Potty officers for the use of." Nothing you won't have heard a
hundred times before.'

'Except?'

'Except nothing.'

A long silence.

'Except that sometimes they get muddled up with sex. So I wake up,
and ..." He risked a glance at Rivers. When he spoke again, his voice
was casual. 'It makes it really quite impossible to like oneself. I've
actually woken up once or twice and wondered whether there was any
point going on.'

And you might well do it, Rivers thought.

That's why I was so furious when they got you up in the middle of
the night.'

Easy to hand out the usual reassurances about the effects on young
men of a celibate life, but not particularly helpful. Prior was becoming
unmistakably depressed. It was doing him no good to wait for his
CO's letter, which might anyway turn out to contain nothing of any
great moment. 'We could try hypnosis now, if you liked.'

'Now?'

'Yes, why not? It's the time we're least likely to be interrupted.'

Prior's eyes flickered round the room. He licked his lips. 'It's odd,


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1

isn't it? When you said most people were tnghtened, I didn't believe
you.'

'What frightens them,' Rivers said carefully, 'is the belief that they're
putting themselves completely in the therapist's power. That he can
make them do anything, even things they'd normally consider ridiculous
or even immoral. But that isn't true, you remain yourself throughout.
Not that I shall be trying to make you do anything ridiculous or
immoral.' He smiled. 'In spite of being the terror of the South Seas.'

Prior laughed, but his face tightened again immediately.

'We can leave it, if you like,' Rivers said gently.

Deep breath. 'No. I can't pester you for it and then turn it down.'

'If it turns out to be . . .' Rivers groped for a sufficiently bland    E

word. 'Distressing, I'll give you something to make you sleep. I mean,
you won't have to face up to the full implications tonight.'

'All right. What do we do?'

'You relax. Sit back in the chair. That's right. Shoulders. Come on,
like this. Now your hands. Let the wrists go. Comfortable? I want you
to look at this pen. No, don't raise your head. Raise your eyes. That's
right. Keep your eyes fixed on the pen. I'm going to count down from
ten. By the time I get to zero, you'll be in a light sleep. All right?'

Prior nodded. He looked profoundly sceptical. Like most bloody
minded people he assumed he would be a poor subject for hypnosis.
Rivers thought he'd be very easy. 'Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . Seven
. . . Your eyelids are heavy now. Don't fight it, let them close. Six . . .
Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . .'


He woke to a dugout smell of wet sandbags and stale farts. He curled
his toes inside his wet boots and felt the creak and sag of chicken wire
as he turned towards the table. The usual jumble: paper, bottles, mugs,
the black-boxed field telephone, a couple of revolvers -- all lit by a
single candle stuck to the wood in a pool of its own grease. A barely
perceptible thinning of the darkness around the gas curtain told him it
must be nearly dawn. And sure enough, a few minutes later Sanderson
lifted the curtain and shouted, 'Stand-to!' The bulky forms on the
other bunks stirred, groaned, groped for revolvers. Soon they were all
trying to climb out of the dugout, difficult because rain and recent
near-hits had turned the steps into a muddy slide. All along the trench
men were crawling out of funk holes. He clumped along the duck
boards to his position, smelling the green, ratty, decomposing smell,
stretching the muscles of his face into a smile whenever the men


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looked up. Then an hour of standing, stiff and shivery, watching dawn
grow.

He had first trench watch. He gulped a mug of chlorine-tasting tea,
and then started walking along to the outermost position on their left.
A smell of bacon frying. In the third fire bay he found Sawdon and
Towers crouched over a small fire made out of shredded sandbags and
candle ends, coaxing the flames. He stopped to chat for a few minutes,
and Towers, blinking under the green mushroom helmet, looked up
and offered him tea. A quiet day, he thought, walking on. Not like the
last few days, when the bombardment had gone on for seventy hours,
and they'd stood-to five times expecting a German counterattack.
Damage from that bombardment was everywhere: crumbling parapets,
flooded saps, dugouts with gagged mouths.

He'd gone, perhaps, three fire bays along when he heard the whoop
of a shell, and, spinning round, saw the scrawl of dusty brown smoke
already drifting away. He thought it'd gone clear over, but then he
heard a cry and, feeling sick in his stomach, he ran back. Logan was
there already. It must have been Logan's cry he heard, for nothing in
that devastation could have had a voice. A conical black hole, still
smoking, had been driven into the side of the trench. Of the kettle, the
frying-pan, the carefully tended fire, there was no sign, and not much
of Sawdon and Towers either, or not much that was recognizable.

There was a pile of sandbags and shovels close by, stacked against
the parapet by a returning work party. He reached for a shovel. Logan
picked up a sandbag and held it open, and he began shovelling soil,
flesh and splinters of blackened bone into the bag. As he shovelled, he
retched. He felt something jar against his teeth and saw that Logan was
offering him a rum bottle. He forced down bile and rum together.
Logan kept his face averted as the shovelling went on. He was swearing
under his breath, steadily, blasphemously, obscenely, inventively. Somebody
came running. 'Don't stand there gawping, man,' Logan said.
'Go and get some lime.'

They'd almost finished when Prior shifted his position on the duck
boards, glanced down, and found himself staring into an eye. Delicately,
like somebody selecting a particularly choice morsel from a
plate, he put his thumb and forefinger down through the duckboards.
His fingers touched the smooth surface and slid before they managed
to get a hold. He got it out, transferred it to the palm of his hand, and
held it out towards Logan. He could see his hand was shaking, but the
shaking didn't seem to be anything to do with him. 'What am I


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supposed to do with this gob-stopper?' I Ic saw Logan blink and knew
he was afraid. At last Logan reached out, grasped his shaking wrist, and
tipped the eye into the bag. 'Williams and me'll do the rest, sir. You go
on back now.'

He shook his head. They spread the lime together, sprinkling it
thickly along the firestep, throwing shovelfuls at a bad patch of wall.
When at last they stood back, beating the white dust from the skirts of
their tunics, he wanted to say something casual, something that would
prove he was all right, but a numbness had spread all over the lower
half of his face.

Back in the dugout he watched people's lips move and was filled
with admiration for them. There was a sense of joy in watching them,
of elation almost. How complex those movements were, how amazing
the glimpses of teeth and tongue, the movement of muscles in the jaw.
He ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth, curved it back, stroked
the ridged palate, flexed his lips, felt the pull of skin and the stretching
of muscles in his throat. All present and correct, but how they combined
together to make sounds he had no idea.

It was Logan who took him to the casualty clearing station. Normally
it would have been his servant, but Logan asked if he could go.
They thumped and splodged along cheerfully enough, or at least Prior
was cheerful. He felt as if nothing could ever touch him again. When a
shell whined across, he didn't flinch, though he knew the Germans had
an accurate fix on both communication trenches. They marched from
stinking mud to dryish duckboards, and the bare landscape he sensed
beyond the tangles of rusty wire gradually changed to fields. Clumps
of brilliant yellow cabbage weed, whose smell mimics gas so accurately
that men tremble, hung over the final trench.

In the clearing station he sat down, Logan beside him. Lying on the
floor was a young man wounded in the back who seemed hardly to
know that they were there. From time to time he moaned, 'I'm cold,
I'm cold,' but when the doctor came in, he shook his head and said
there was nothing he could do. 'There's no need for you to stay,' he
said to Logan. 'He'll be all right.' So they shook hands and parted. He
sat down on the bench again and tried to think back over the events
that had brought him there, but found he could remember very little
about them. Two of his men were dead, he remembered that. Nothing
else. Like the speechlessness, it seemed natural. He sat on the bench, his
clasped hands dangling between his legs, and thought of nothing.

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Rivers watched the play of emotions on Prior's face as he fitted the
recovered memory into his past. He was unprepared for what happened
next.

7s that all?' Prior said.

He seemed to be beside himself with rage.

'I don't know about all,' Rivers said. Td've thought that was a
traumatic experience by any standards.'

Prior almost spat at him. 'It was nothing.'

He put his head in his hands, at first, it seemed, in bewilderment, but
then after a few moments he began to cry. Rivers waited a while, then
walked round the desk and offered his handkerchief. Instead of taking
it, Prior seized Rivers by the arms, and began butting him in the chest,
hard enough to hurt. This was not an attack, Rivers realized, though it
felt like one. It was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical
contact. Rivers was reminded of a nanny goat on his brother's farm,
being lifted almost off her feet by the suckling kid. Rivers held Prior's
shoulders, and after a while the butting stopped. Prior raised his blind
and slobbery face. 'Sorry about that.'

'That's all right.' He waited for Prior to wipe his face, then asked,
'What did you think happened?'

'I didn't know.'

'Yes, you did. You thought you knew.'

'I knew two of my men had been killed. I thought . . .' He stopped. 'I
thought it must've been my fault. We were in the same trenches we'd
been in when I first arrived. The line's terrible there. It winds in and out
of brick stacks. A lot of the trenches face the wrong way. Even in
daylight with a compass and a map you can get lost. At night... I'd been
there about a week, I suppose, when a man took out patrol to see if a
particular dugout was occupied at night. Compasses don't work, there's
too much metal about. He'd been crawling round in circles for God
knows how long, when he came upon what he thought was a German
wiring party. He ordered his men to open fire. Well, all hell was let loose.
Then after a while somebody realized there were British voices shouting
on both sides. Five men killed. Eleven injured. I looked at his face as he sat
in the dugout and he was. . . You could have done that and he wouldn't' we
blinked. Before I'd always thought the worst thing would be if you were
wounded and left out there, but when I saw his face I thought, no. This is
the worst thing. And then when I couldn't remember anything except
that two of my men had been killed, I thought it had to be something like
that.' He looked up. 'I couldn't see what else I'd need to forget.'


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1

'Then you must be relieved.'

'Relieved?'

'You did your duty. You've nothing to reproach yourself with. You
even finished cleaning the trench.'

'I've cleaned up dozens of trenches. I don't see why that would
make me break down.'

'You're thinking of breakdown as a reaction to a single traumatic
event, but it's not like that. It's more a matter of ... erosion. Weeks
and months of stress in a situation where you can't get away from it.'
He smiled. 'I'm sorry to sound so impersonal. I know how you hate
being "the patient".'

'I don't mind in the least. I just want to understand why it happened.  |f

You see what I find so difficult is ... I don't think of myself as the kind     
*~

of person who breaks down. And yet time and time again I'm brought
up hard against the fact that I did.'

'I don't know that there is "a kind of person who breaks down". I
imagine most of us could if the pressure were bad enough. I know
I could.'

Prior gazed round the room in mock amazement. 'Did the wallpaper
speak?'

Rivers smiled. Till tell them to give you a sleeping tablet.'

At the door Prior turned. 'He had very blue eyes, you know. Towers.
We used to call him the Hun.'


After making sure Prior got his sleeping tablet, Rivers went upstairs to
his own room and began to undress. He tugged at his tie, and as he did so
caught sight of himself in the looking-glass. He pulled down his right lid
to reveal a dingy and blood-shot white. What am I supposed to do with this
gob-stopper? He released the lid. No need to think about that. If he went on
feeling like this, he'd have to see Bryce and arrange to take some leave.
It'd reached the point where he woke up in the morning feeling almost
as exhausted as he had done when he went to bed. He sat on the edge of
the bath and began to take his boots off. Ye will surely say unto me this
proverb. Physician, heal thyself. One of his father's favourite texts. Sitting,
bored and fidgety, in the family pew, Rivers had never thought it an
odd choice, though now he wondered why it cropped up as frequently
as it did. Fathers remain opaque to their sons, he thought, largely because
the sons find it so hard to believe that there's anything in the father
worth seeing. Until he's dead, and it's too late. Mercifully, doctors are
also opaque to their patients. Unless the patient happens to be Prior.


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Rivers finished undressing and got into the bath. He lay back, eyes
closed, feeling the hot water start to unravel the knots in his neck and
shoulders. Not that Prior was the only patient to have found him . . .
Well. Rather less than opaque. He remembered John Layard, and as
always the memory was painful, because his treatment of Layard had
ended in failure. He told himself there was no real resemblance between
Layard and Prior. What made Prior more difficult was the constant probing. 
Layard had never probed. But then Layard hadn't thought he
needed to probe. Layard had thought he knew.

Lying with his eyes closed like this, Rivers could imagine himself
back in St John's, hearing Layard's footsteps coming across the court.
What was it he'd said? 'I don't see you as a father, you know.' Looking up from 
the rug in front of the fire. Laughing. 'More a sort of. . . male
mother.' He was like Prior. The same immensely shrewd eyes. X-ray
eyes. The same outrageous frankness.

Why should he remember that? It was because of that ridiculous
image of the nanny goat that had flashed into his mind while Prior was
butting him in the stomach. He disliked the term 'male mother'. He
thought he could remember disliking it even at the time. He distrusted
the implication that nurturing, even when done by a man, remains
female, as if the ability were in some way borrowed, or even stolen,
from women -- a sort of moral equivalent of the couvade. If that were
true, then there was really very little hope.

He could see why Layard might use the term. Layard's relationship
with his father had been difficult, and he was a young man, without
any personal experience of fathering. Though fathering, like mothering,
takes many forms beyond the biological. Rivers had often been
touched by the way in which young men, some of them not yet
twenty, spoke about feeling like fathers to their men. Though when
you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters,
food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of theirs.
Rivers had only ever seen that look in one other place: in the public
wards of hospitals, on the faces of women who were bringing up large
families on very low incomes, women who, in their early thirties,
could easily be taken for fifty or more. It was the look of people who
are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.

One of the paradoxes of the war - one of the many - was that this
most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers
and men that was. . . domestic. Caring. As Layard would undoubtedly
have said, maternal. And that wasn't the only trick the war had played.


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Mobilization. The Great Adventure. They'd been mobilized into holes
in the ground so constricted they could hardly move. And the Great
Adventure -- the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they'd
devoured as boys -- consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be
killed. The war that had promised so much in the way of 'manly'
activity had actually delivered 'feminine' passivity, and on a scale that
their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke
down.

In bed, he switched off the light and opened the curtains. Rain,
silvery in the moonlight, streaked the glass, blurring the vista of tennis
courts and trees, gathering, at the lower edge of the pane, into a long
puddle that bulged and overflowed. Somebody, on the floor below,
screamed. Rivers pulled the curtains to, and settled down to sleep,
wishing, not for the first time, that he was young enough for France.

I



TEN


Sarah watched the grey trickle of tea creep up the sides of her cup. The
tea-lady looked at it, doubtfully. That strong enough for you, love?'

'It'll do. Long as it's warm and wet.'

'My God,' Betty Hargreave said. 'Virgin's pee. I can't drink that.'

Madge nudged Sarah sharply in the ribs. 'No, well, it wouldn't be
very appropriate, would it?'

'Hey up, you'll make us spill it.'

They went to the far end of the top trestle table and squeezed on to
the bench. 'Come on, move your burns along,' Madge said. 'Let two
little 'uns in.'

Lizzie collected her Woodbines and matches, and shuffled along.
'What happened to your young man, then, Sarah?'

'Didn't bloody show up, did he? I was sat an hour on Sunday all
dolled up and nowhere to go.'

'Aw,' Lizzie said.

'Probably just as well,' said Madge. 'At least now you know what
he was after.'

'I knew what he was after. I just want to know why he's not still
after it.'


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'Didn't get it, then?' Betty said, bringing her cup to the table.

'No, he bloody did not.'

'He was good-looking, though, wasn't he?' said Madge.

'All right, I suppose.'

Betty laughed. 'Better fish in the sea, eh, Sarah?'

'Aye, and they can stop there 'n' all. Not interested.'

A whoop of incredulity. Sarah buried her nose in her cup and then,
as soon as she felt their attention had been withdrawn, looked at the
window. You couldn't really see what it was like outside because the
glass was frosted, but here and there raindrops clung to the panes, each
with its crescent moon of silver. She wished she was outside and could
feel the rain on her face. It would have been nice to have gone to the
seaside yesterday, she thought. Bugger him, why didn't he show up?

The others were talking about Lizzie's husband, who'd thrown her
into a state of shock by announcing, in his last letter, that he was
hoping to come home on leave soon.

'I haven't had a wink of sleep since,' said Lizzie.

'You're getting yourself into a state about nothing,' Betty said. 'First
of all he mightn't get it, and second, they sometimes only give them a
few days. Ten to one, he'll get no further than London.'

'Aye, and he'll be pissed as a newt.'

'Well, better pissed down there than up here.'

'Don't you want to see him?' asked Sarah.

'I do not. I've seen enough of him to last me a lifetime. Aye, I know
what you're thinking. You think I'm hard, don't you? Well I am hard
and so would you be.' Lizzie's yellow face showed two bright spots of
colour on the cheekbones. 'Do you know what happened on August
4th 1914?'

Sarah opened her mouth.

Till tell you what happened. Peace broke out. The only little bit of
peace /'ve ever had. No, I don't want him back. I don't want him back
on leave. I don't want him back when it's over. As far as I'm concerned
the Kaiser can keep him.' She lowered her chin, brooding. Till tell you
what I'm going to do. I'm going to get meself some false teeth, and
I'm going to have a bloody good time.'

'Yes, well, you want to,' said Betty.

'She's been on about them teeth as long as I've known her,' said
Madge. 'You want to stop talking about it, and go and do it. You can
afford it. All this won't last, you know.' She jerked her thumb at the
room full of overall-clad women. 'It's too good to last.'


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'It's not the money that bothers me.'

'He'd give you gas,' said Madge. 'You're never going to look anything
while you've got them in your mouth. And you're never going
to feel right either for the simple reason you're swallowing all the
corruption.'

'Yeh, I know. I will go.'

'Time, ladies,' the supervisor said. 'Time.'

'Eeh, it never is,' said Lizzie. 'Do you know, I'm bloody sure they
fix that clock!'

Three hours down,' said Sarah. 'Nine to go.'

All over the room yellow-skinned women were dragging themselves
to their feet. As they were going up the stairs, Sarah fell into line beside
Betty. Lizzie had nipped into the toilet to finish her cigarette.

'You think she's hard, don't you?' said Betty.

'Well, yes, I do a bit. When you think what he's going through.'

'Yes, well. You know when I was a kid we used to live next door to
them, and it was thump thump thump half the bloody night, you'd've
thought she was coming through the wall. Oh, and you used to see her
in the yard next morning, and her face'd be all swelled up. "I fell over
the coal scuttle," she used to say. Well that used to get me Mam. "He
knocks you about," she says, "and you go round apologizing for it,"
she says. "Where's the justice in that?" And mind you, she was right,
you know.'


Willard lay face down on his bed, naked. His thighs and buttocks were
trenched with purple scars, some just beginning to silver. These injuries
had been sustained when his company was retreating across a graveyard
under heavy fire, and several tombstone fragments had become embedded
in his flesh. 'You want to try it,' he said. 'Lying two months on
your belly in a hospital bed with Requiescat in Pace stuck up your arse.'

This remark was ostensibly addressed to the orderly, so Rivers was
able to ignore it. 'They've healed well,' he said, moving down the
bed.

Willard looked across his shoulder. 'The flesh wounds have. There's
still the injury to the spine.'

'Let's have you on your back.'

The orderly came forward to help, but Willard waved him away.
His whole upper body was massively powerful, though inevitably
running to flab. By heaving and twisting, he could just manage to
drag the wasted legs over, though they followed the bulk of his body,

I
REGENERATION


passively, like slime trails after a snail. The orderly bent down and
straightened his feet.

Rivers waited until Willard was covered up, then nodded to the
orderly to leave. After the door had closed, he said, 'There was no
injury to the spine.'

Willard lay back against the pillows, his jaw stubbornly set.

'If you believe your spine was damaged, how do you account for
the fact that so many doctors have examined you and told you that it
isn't?' He watched Willard's face closely. 'Do you think they're all
incompetent? All of them? Or do you think they're in some kind of
conspiracy to convince you you can walk when in fact you can't?'

Willard raised himself on to one elbow. It was extraordinary the
impression he created, that mixture of immobility and power. Like a
bull seal dragging itself across rocks. 'You think I'm malingering.'

'I know you're not.'

'But you've just said I am.'

'No.'

'If there's no injury to the spine, then why can't I walk?'

'I think you know why.'

Willard gave a short, hissing laugh. 'I know what you want me to
say. I can't walk because I don't want to go back.' He glared at Rivers.
'Well, I won't say it. It would be tantamount to an admission of
cowardice.'

Rivers picked up his cap and cane. 'Not in my book.' He was aware
of Willard watching him. 'It's true paralysis occurs because a man
wants to save his life. He doesn't want to go forward, and take part in
some hopeless attack. But neither is he prepared to run away.' He smiled.
'Paralysis is no use to a coward, Mr Willard. A coward needs his legs.'

Willard didn't reply, though Rivers thought he detected a slight
relaxation of tension. The bone structure of Willard's face was strong
almost to the point of brutality, and his eyes were a curious shade of
pale blue. There was a sheen on his hair and skin like the gloss on
the coat of an animal. He'd been something of an athlete before the
war, though Rivers suspected he had never been remarkable for
depth of intelligence. 'Your wife's coming to see you this afternoon,
isn't she?'

Willard's eyes went to the photograph on his washstand. 'Yes.'

'Why don't you get dressed? There's no reason for you to be in bed.
And if you got dressed you could go out into the grounds. It'd be a lot
pleasanter for your wife.'

REGENERATION


I

Willard thought about it, reluctant to concede anything that might
suggest his illness was not purely physical. 'Yes, all right.'
'Good. I'll send an orderly in to help you with your boots.'


Sassoon arrived at the Conservative Club about ten minutes early.
'Captain Rivers isn't here yet, sir,' the porter said. 'But if you'd like to
wait in the morning room, I'm sure he won't be long. Up the stairs
and first right.'

The staircase was of twisting marble, almost too imposing for the
size of the hall, like a Roman nose on an unprepossessing face. As
Sassoon climbed, he passed portraits of Edinburgh worthies of the past,
men with white beards and wing collars, whose gold watch-chains and
fobs nestled on swelling abdomens. His first thought on entering the
morning room was that somebody with a taste for practical jokes had
cut the Edinburgh worthies out of their frames and stuck them in
chairs all over the room. Everywhere saurian heads and necks peered
out of wing armchairs, looking at the young man in the doorway with
the automatic approval his uniform evoked, and then - or was he
perhaps being oversensitive? -- with a slight ambivalence, a growing
doubt, as they worked out what the blue badge on his tunic meant.
Perhaps it was just oversensitivity, for you saw that same look of
mingled admiration and apprehension, wherever you went. Old men
were often ambivalent about young men in uniform, and rightly so,
when you considered how very ambivalent the young men felt about
them.

The chairs, which looked uncomfortable, were very comfortable
indeed. Sassoon, glad to be away from the boiled cabbage and custard
smells of the Craiglockhart dining room, sank back and closed his eyes.
Further along, at a table by the window, two old men were nattering
about the war. Both had sons at the front, it seemed, or was it only
one? No, the other was trapped in England, apparently, on a training
course. He listened to the rumble of their voices and felt a well-practised
hatred begin to flow. It needed only a slighting remark about the
courage of the German Army to rouse him to real fury, and very soon
it came. He was aware of something sexual in this anger. He looked at
the cloth straining across their broad backs, at the folds of beef-pink
skin that overlapped their collars, and thought, with uncharacteristic
crudity, When did you two last get it up?

Gordon's death had woken him up, there was no doubt. That
moment when he'd come down to breakfast, glanced at the casualty
REGENERATION


lists and seen Gordon's name had been a turning point of sorts, though
he didn't yet know in which direction he would turn. It seemed to
him that his first month at Craiglockhart had been spent in a kind
of sleep. Too much steam pudding, too much putting little balls
into holes. Looking round the room, he knew why he felt sickened
by himself, why his fuming against elderly men with sons at the front no longer 
satisfied him. It was because he'd given in, lapsed, pretended
to himself that he was still actively protesting whereas in reality
he'd let himself be pacified, sucked into the comforting routine, the
uneventfulness of Craiglockhart life. As Rivers had meant him to be.

He got up and began looking at the pictures that lined the walls. The
portraits here were not of the professional men and civic dignitaries of
the recent past, but of the landed gentry of generations before that,
shown, for the most part, either setting off to, or returning from, the
hunt. He was obviously not destined to get away from memories of
Gordon and hunting today. Walking from picture to picture, he remembered
the notebook he'd taken with him into the trenches on his first
tour of duty. It had contained nothing but bare details of past hunts,
where they'd found, how far he'd run, whether they'd killed. On and
on. A terribly meaningless little set of squiggles it would have seemed
to anybody else, but for him it had contained the Sussex lanes, the
mists, the drizzle, the baying of hounds, clods flying from under the
horses' feet, staggering into the house, bones aching, reliving the hunt
over dinner, and then, after dinner, shadows on the wall of the old
nursery and Gordon's face in the firelight, the scent of logs, the warmth,
his whole face feeling numbed and swollen in the heat. His mind
switched to his last few hours in France when, already wounded in the
shoulder, he'd careered along a German trench, slinging Mills bombs
to left and right, shouting, 'View halloa!' That was the moment, he
thought. That was when the old Sassoon had cracked wide open and
something new had stepped out of the shell. Bless you, my dear, Eddie
Marsh had written, when he told him about it. Never take it more
seriously than that. But Eddie had missed the point. Hunting had always
been serious. Every bit as serious as war.

'Sorry I'm late,' Rivers said, coming up behind him. 'I meant to be
here when you arrived.'

That's all right. These old codgers've been keeping me amused.' He
glanced round quickly. 'I mean the ones on the wall.'

'It is rather a geriatric gathering, isn't it?' Rivers sat down. 'Would
you like a drink?' He raised his arm and a white-jacketed, elderly


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waiter came tottering across. 'Gin and tonic for me, I think. What'll
you have, Siegfried?'

'The same, please.'

Rivers's inspection of the menu was confined to identifying which
particular variety of poached fish was currently on offer. Sassoon gave
the matter more thought. Rivers watched him as he pored over the
menu and thought how much easier his life would have been if they'd
sent Siegfried somewhere else. It wasn't simply the discomfort of
having to express views he was no longer sure he held -- though, as a
scientist, he did find that acutely uncomfortable. No, it was more than
that. Every case posed implicit questions about the individual costs of
the war, and never more so than in the run up to a round of Medical
Boards, when the MOs had to decide which men were fit to return to
duty. This would have been easier if he could have believed, as Lewis
Yealland, for example, believed, that men who broke down were
degenerates whose weakness would have caused them to break down,
eventually, even in civilian life, but Rivers could see no evidence of
that. The vast majority of his patients had no record of any mental
trouble. And as soon as you accepted that the man's breakdown was a
consequence of his war experience rather than of his own innate weakness,
then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a
test, not only of the genuineness of the individual's symptoms, but also
of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had
survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along
came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for
constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At
times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and
that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when
he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers's life had consisted of asking
questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be
obtained, but there are limits to how many fundamental questions you
want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn't
end till midnight. All very well for Sassoon. He spent his days playing
golf.

None of this prevented him from watching Sassoon's continued
poring over the menu with affection as well as amusement.

Sassoon looked up. 'Am I taking too long?'

'No, take as long as you like.'

'It's almost pre-war standard, isn't it?'

'I hope you're not going to protest?'


104

I
R E G F. N F. R A The I O N


'No. You can rely 011 me to be inconsistent.'

Rivers was not afraid of Sassoon's noticing any change in him. Siegfried's 
introversion was remarkable, even by the normal standards
of unhappy young men. His love for his men cut through that self
absorption, but Rivers sometimes wondered whether anything else
did. And yet he had so many good qualities. It was rare to find a man
in whom courage was the dominating characteristic, as malice or laziness
or greed might be the ruling characteristic of lesser men.

The dining room was almost empty. They were shown to a table
for two by a window that overlooked the club's small, walled garden.
A scent of roses, drenched from the morning's rain, drifted in through
the open window.

The waiter was very young, sixteen perhaps. Red hair, big freckles
splodged over a pale skin, knobbly, pink-knuckled hand clasping the
carving knife. With his other hand he lifted the domed lid from
the platter to reveal a joint of very red beef. Sassoon smiled. 'That looks
nice.'

The boy carved three slices. As he bent to get the warmed plate
from the shelf below, it was possible to see the nape of his neck,
defenceless under the stiff collar.

'Is that all right, sir?'

'One more, perhaps?'

The boy was looking at Sassoon with undisguised hero-worship.
Not surprisingly, Rivers thought. He's dragging out the weeks in this
dreary job waiting for his turn to go out. At least they no longer
allowed boys of his age to lie their way in. He noticed Sassoon smiling
to himself.

'What's amusing you?'

'I was thinking about Campbell. Not our Campbell. A much less
engaging man, and ... er ... allegedly sane. He gave lectures -- still
does, I believe -- on "The Spirit of the Bayonet". You know, "Stick
him in the kidneys, it'll go in like a hot knife through butter." "What's the
good of six inches of steel sticking out the back of a man's neck? Three
inches'll do him. When he croaks, go and find another." And so on. And
you know, the men sit there laughing and cheering and making obscene
gestures. They hate it.' He smiled. 'I was reminded because that boy
was doing so well with the carving knife.'

'Yes, I noticed.'

'Very much the sort of man you'd pick as your servant.'

Rivers said mischievously, 'Not bad-looking either.'


105

REGENERATION


Tin afraid that has to take second place. You look for skill with the
bayonet first because he's always on your left in the attack.'

They ate in silence for a while. Rivers said, 'Have you heard from
the friend you were going to write to about Gordon?'

'Yes. It's true apparently, he did die instantly. His father said he had,
but they don't always tell parents the truth. I've written too many
letters like that myself.'

'It must be some consolation to know he didn't suffer.'

Sassoon's expression hardened. 'I was glad to have it confirmed.' An
awkward silence. 'I had some more bad news this morning. Do you
remember me talking to you about Julian Dadd? Shot in the throat,
two brothers killed? Well, his mental state has worsened apparently.
He's in a -- what I
suppose I ought to call a mental hospital. Given
present company. The awful thing is he's got some crazy idea he didn't
do well enough. Nobody else thinks so, but apparently there's no
arguing with him. He was one of my heroes, you know. I remember
looking at him one evening. We'd just come in from inspecting the
men's billets -- which were lousy as usual, and -- he cared. He really
cared. And I looked at him and I thought, 7 want to be like you.' He
laughed, mocking his hero-worship, but not disowning it. 'Anyway, I
suppose I've succeeded, haven't I? Since we're both in the loony-bin.'

The provocation was deliberate. When Rivers didn't rise to it,
Sassoon said, 'It makes it quite difficult to go on, you know. When
things like this keep happening to people you know and and . . . love.
To go on with the protest, I mean.'

Silence.

Sassoon leant forward. 'Wake up, Rivers. I thought you'd pounce
on that.'

'Did you?'

A pause. 'No, I suppose not.'

Rivers dragged his hand down across his eyes. 'I don't feel much
like pouncing.'


Rivers left the club an hour later. He'd left Siegfried with Ralph
Sampson, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, whom they'd bumped
into after lunch. At first Sassoon had been almost too overawed to
speak, but Sampson had soon put paid to that. Rivers had left him
chatting away quite happily. Lunch itself had been rather depressing.
At one point Siegfried had said, Tm beginning to feel used up.' You
could understand it. He'd suffered repeated bereavements in the last


106

I
REGENERATION


two years, as first one contemporary then another died. In some ways
the experience of these young men paralleled the experience of the
very old. They looked back on intense memories and felt lonely because
there was nobody left alive who'd been there. That habit of Siegfried's
of looking back, the inability to envisage any kind of future, seemed to
be getting worse.

Not an easy case, Rivers thought. Not in the usual sense a case at all.
He had no idea what the outcome would be, though he thought he
could get Siegfried to give in. His love for his men. The need he had to prove 
his courage. By any rational standard, he'd already proved it, over
and over again, but then the need wasn't altogether rational. Given the
strength of that need, it was amazing he'd managed to tolerate being
cooped up with 'wash-outs' and 'degenerates' even as long as he had.
Putting those forces together and getting him back to France was a
task of approximately the same order of difficulty as flicking a stag
beetle on to its back. The trouble was Rivers respected Sassoon too
much to manipulate him. He had to be convinced that going back was
the right thing to do.

At the foot of the Craiglockhart drive, Rivers saw Willard and Mrs
Willard. For some extraordinary reason Willard had got his wife to
push him as far as the gates, despite the downward slope which he
must have seen would make the return journey difficult. Now they
were marooned.

Rivers greeted Willard, waited for an introduction to his wife, and,
when it failed to come, introduced himself. Mrs Willard was extremely
young, attractive in the small-breasted, slim-hipped way of modern
girls. As they chatted about the deceptive nature of slopes and the
awkwardness of wheelchairs, Rivers became aware of Willard's hands
clenched on the arms of the chair. He felt Willard's fury at being
stranded like this, impotent. Good. The more furious he was the
better.

Rivers said to Mrs Willard, 'Here, I'll give you a hand.'

With two of them pushing they made steady progress, though there
was one nasty moment near the top, when they struck a muddy patch.
But then the wheels bit, and they reached level ground at a cracking
pace.

'There you are,' Mrs Willard said, bending over her husband, breathless
and laughing. 'Made it.'

Willard's face would have curdled milk.

'Why don't you come in and have a cup of tea?' Rivers suggested.


107

REGENERATION


Mrs Willard looked to her husband for guidance. When none came,
she said, 'Yes, that would be lovely.'

'My door's on the left as you go in. I'll just go ahead and arrange
things. You'll be all right now?'

'Perfectly, thank you,' said Willard.

Rivers went into the hall, smiling, only to have the smile wiped off
his face by the sight of Matron standing immediately inside the entrance.
She'd observed the entire incident and evidently disapproved.
'You could have sent an orderly down to push the chair, Captain
Rivers.'

Rivers opened his mouth, and shut it again. He reminded himself,
not for the first time, that it was absolutely necessary for Matron to
win some of their battles.

I



ELEVEN


Sassoon was trying to decipher a letter from H. G. Wells when Owen
knocked on his door.

'As far as I can make out, he says he's coming to see Rivers.'

Owen looked suitably impressed. 'He must be really worried about
you.'

'Oh, it's not me he wants to talk about, it's his new book.' Sassoon
smiled. 'You don't know many writers, do you?'

'Not many.'

And I, Sassoon thought, am showing off. Which at least was better
than moaning about Gordon's death to somebody who had more than
enough problems of his own. 'I don't suppose he'll come. They all talk
about it, but in the end it's just too far. I sometimes wonder whether
that's why they put me here. Whether it was a case of being sent to
Rivers or just sent as far away as possible.'

'Probably Rivers. He gets all the awkward ones.' Owen stopped in
some confusion. 'Not that you're --'

'Oh, I think I count as awkward. By any standard.' He handed a
sheet of paper across. 'For the Hydra.'

'May I read it?'

'That's the general idea.'


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RE GENERATION


Owen read, folded the paper and nodded.

To forestall possible effusions, Sassoon said quickly, 'I'm not satisfied
with the last three lines, but they'll have to do.'

'I tried yesterday, but you were out.'

'I'd be with Rivers.' He smiled. 'Do you ever feel like strangling
Brock?'

'No, I get on rather well with him.'

'I get on with Rivers. It's just ... He picked up something I said at
lunchtime about not being able to imagine the future. He doesn't often
press, but my God when he does

'Why did he want you to talk about that?'

'Part of the great campaign to get me back to France. He wants me
to put the protest in a longer perspective. You know, "What did you
do in the Great War, Siegfried?" Well, I spent three very comfortable
years in a loony-bin eating steamed pudding and playing golf. While other 
people -- some of them rather close friends -- got blown to smithereens.
He wants me to admit I won't be able to bear it. What's more,
he's probably right.'

'Think of the poems you could write.'

'Not war poems.'

Owen's expression darkened. 'There are other subjects.'

'Yes, of course.'

A slightly awkward pause. 'The trouble is he just knows more than
I do. You know, he's very good . . . He tries to behave as if we're
equal. But in the end he's a Gold Medallist of the Royal Society, and I
left Cambridge without taking a degree. And now and again it
shows.'

'That doesn't mean he's right.'

'No, but it does make it very difficult for me to keep my end up in a
discussion.'

'Did you talk about after the war?'

'No. I can't, I've no plans. Do you know what you're going to do?'

'I'm going to keep pigs.'

'Pigs?'

'Yes. People think pigs are dirty, you know, but they're not. They're
very clean animals, given half the chance. And it would combine so
well with poetry, you see. Actually much better than teaching, because
if you're teaching properly you're using the same part of your mind.
But pig-keeping

'Perhaps we should go into partnership. It'd shut Rivers up.'


109

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Owen, belatedly aware of being laughed at, blushed and didn't
reply.

'No, well, I don't suppose I'd be much use with the pigs, but I may
be able to help with the poems.' He nodded at Owen's tunic.

Owen extracted a sheaf of papers. 'I told you they were all short but
actually there is one long one. Antaeus and and Hercules.' He handed
the papers over. 'Do you know the legend? Antaeus is too strong for
Hercules as long as he keeps his feet on mother Earth. But as soon as
Hercules lifts him --'

'He's helpless. Yes, it rings a bell.' Sassoon started to read. After a
few seconds he looked up. 'Why don't you get yourself a book?
There's nothing worse than being watched by the Onlie Begetter.'

'Sorry.' Owen got up and pretended to look at the books on
Sassoon's shelf.

At last Sassoon looked up. 'It's very good. Why Antaeus?'

'Oh, it's something Brock's keen on. He thinks we - the patients are
like Antaeus in the sense that we've been ungrounded by the war.
And the way back to health is to re-establish the link between oneself
and the earth, but understanding "earth" to mean society as well as
nature. That's why we do surveys and things like that.'

'I thought all the dashing around was to keep your mind off it?'

'No, that's part of the treatment. Ergotherapy.'

'Well, it's an interesting idea. Though I don't know that being
stuck in a dugout ever made me feel I was losing contact with the
earth.'

Owen smiled. 'No, nor me. It does work, though.'

Sassoon picked up the next sheet. Craning his neck, Owen could
just see the title of the poem. 'That's in your style,' he said.

'Yes. I ... er ... noticed.'

'No good?'

'Starts and ends well. What happened in the middle?'

'That's quite old, that bit. I wrote that two years ago.'

'They do say if you leave something in a drawer long enough it'll
either rot or ripen.'

'The bit at the end . . . About "dirt". Those are the actual words.'

'Yes, and they could do with changing. I've just cut: "You sod" out
of a poem. Those were my actual words.'

'So it's no good?'

Sassoon hesitated. 'It's not much good at the moment. I suppose the
thing is, are you interested enough to go on?'

I
REGENERATION


'Yc-es. I have to start somewhere. And I think you're right. It's mad
not to write about the war when it's --'

'Such an experience.'

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

'My only doubt is ... The the fact that you admire somebody very
much doesn't automatically mean they're a good model. I mean, I
admire Wilde, but if I started trying to be witty and elegant and
incisive, I'd probably fall flat on my face.'

'Yes, I see that. Well not that. I mean I see the point. But I do think I
can take something from you.'

'Fair enough.' Sassoon went back to his reading. 'I think you're
probably right,' he said, after a while. 'If I do nothing else, I might
help you get rid of some of this mush.'

'Some of the sonnets are quite early.'

'Puberty?' A long pause. Early sonnets fell like snow. 'Oh, now this
is good. "Song of Songs.'"

'That's last week.'

'Is it? Now you see what I mean about me not being necessarily the
right model? 7 couldn't do this. And yet of it's kind it's absolutely
perfect.'

Owen sat down. He looked as if his knees had buckled.

'I think that should go in the Hydra.'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'a. It's not good enough, b. Editors shouldn't publish their own
work.'

'a. I'm a better judge of that than you are. At the moment, b. Rubbish.
And c.' Sassoon leant across and snatched his own poem back. 'If you
don't publish that, you can't have this.'

Owen seemed to be contemplating a counterattack.

'd. I'm bigger than you are.'

'All right, I'll print it.' He took Sassoon's poem back.
'Anonymously.'

'Cheat.' Sassoon was shuffling Owen's papers together. 'Look, why
don't you have a go at . . .' He peered at the title. ' "The DeadBeat"?
Work at it till you think you've made some progress, then bring it
back and we'll have a go at it together. It's not too traumatic, is it?
That memory.'

'Good heavens, no.'

'How long do you spend on it? Not that one, I mean generally?'

'Fifteen minutes.' He saw Sassoon's expression change. 'That's every
day:

'Good God, man, that's no use. You've got to sweat your guts out.
Look, it's like drill. You don't wait till you feel like doing it.'

'Well, it's certainly a new approach to the Muse. "Number from the
left! Form fours! Right turn!"'

'It works. I'll see you - shall we say Thursday? After dinner.' He
opened the door and stood aside to let Owen past. 'And REGENERATION


I
shall expect
to find both poems in the Hydra.'

I


TWELVE


After Prior had been waiting for perhaps five minutes, the lodging
house door opened and Sarah stood there. 'You've got a nerve,' she
said, beginning to close the door.

Prior put a finger in the crack. 'I'm here now.'

'Which is more than you were last week. Go on, shift.'

'I couldn't come last week. I was so late back they kept me in.'

'Bit strict, aren't they? Your parents.'

Too late, he remembered the lies he'd told. He pointed to the blue
badge on his tunic. 'Not parents. The CO.'

The door stopped shutting.

'I know it sounds stupid, but it is the truth.'

'Oh, all right, I believe you.' Her eyes fell on the badge. 'And if
you're getting yourself upset about that, don't bother. I knew
anyway.'

'How did you know?' What had he been doing? Drooling?

'You don't think you're the only one takes it off, do you? They all
do. Betty says she had a young man once, she never saw him wearing
it. Mind you, knowing Betty, I shouldn't think she saw him wearing
much at all.'

By day, the yellowness of her skin astonished him. It said a lot for
her that she was still attractive, that she managed to wear it like a
rather dashing accessory.

'There is just one thing,' she said, coming out into the porch. 'If I do
go out with you, I want one thing clear at the start. I think you


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must've got a very wrong impression of me the other night. Knocking
all that port back.' She raised her eyes to his face. 'I don't usually drink
much at all.'

'I know that. You were gone too quick for somebody that was used
to it.'

'Right, then. Long as you know. I'll get me jacket.'

He waited, looking up and down the hot street. A trickle of sweat
had started in his armpits. From deep inside the house came a woman's
voice raised in anger.

The landlady,' Sarah said, coming back. 'Belgian, married a Scot,
the poor sod. I don't think he knew what he was getting. Still, she only
charges a shilling for the laundry, and when you think the sheets come
off the bed bright yellow you can't complain about that.'

He felt at home with her, with this precise delineation of the cost of
everything, which was not materialistic or grasping, but simply a
recognition of the boundaries and limitations of life. 'I thought we'd
get out of Edinburgh,' he said. 'It's too hot.'

Most of Edinburgh was using this last weekend in August to escape
the city, not deterred by a sallow tinge to the sky that suggested the
hot, sticky weather might break into thunder before the day was out.
The train was packed, but he managed to get her a seat, and stood near
by. She smiled up at him, but in this rackety, sweating box it was
impossible to talk. He looked at the other passengers. A trio of girls out
on a spree, a young mother with a struggling toddler tugging at her
blouse, a middle-aged couple whose bodies sagged together. Something
about that stale intimacy sharpened his sense of the strangeness, the
separateness of Sarah's body. He was so physically aware of her that
when the knee of his breeches brushed against her skirt he felt as if the
contact had been skin on skin.

A ganglion of rails, the train juddering over points, and then they
were slowing, and people were beginning to stir and clutch bags, and
jam the aisles. 'Let's wait,' he said.

Sarah pressed against him, briefly, to let the woman and her child
past, and then he sat beside her as the train emptied. After a while she
reached down and touched his hand.

They took their time walking to the sea. At first he was disappointed,
it was so crowded. Men with trousers rolled up to show knobbly legs,
handkerchiefs knotted over sweating scalps, women with skirts tucked
up to reveal voluminous bloomers, small children screaming as the
damp sand was towelled off their legs. Everywhere people swirling


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their tongues round ice-cream cones, biting into candy-floss, licking
rock, sucking fingers, determined to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure
from the day. In his khaki, Prior moved among them like a ghost.
Only Sarah connected him to the jostling crowd, and he put his hand
around her, clasping her tightly, though at that moment he felt no
stirring of desire. He said, 'You wouldn't think there was a war on,
would you?'

They walked down to the water's edge. He felt quite callous towards
her now, even as he drew her towards him and matched his stride to
hers. She belonged with the pleasure-seeking crowds. He both envied
and despised her, and was quite coldly determined to get her. They
owed him something, all of them, and she should pay. He glanced at
her. 'Shall we walk along?'

Their linked shadows, dumpy and deformed, stretched across the
sand. After a while they came to an outcrop of rock, and, clambering
over it, found they'd left the crowded part of the beach behind. Sarah
took off her jacket and then, with a great fuss and pleas not to look,
her shoes and stockings as well. She paddled at the water's edge, where
the waves seethed between her toes.

'I don't suppose you're allowed to take anything off?' she said,
looking back at him, teasing.

'Not a thing.'

'Not even your boots?'

'No, but I
can wade. I always paddle with me boots on.'

He didn't expect her to understand, or if she did, to admit it, but she
turned on him at once. 'Boots have a way of springing a leak.'

'Not mine.'

'Oh, you'd be different, I suppose?'

Until now the air had been so still it scarcely moved against the skin.
But now small gusts began to whip up the sand, stinging patches of
bare skin. Prior looked back the way they'd come. The sun was past its
height. Even the little mounds of worm-casts had each its individual
shadow, but what chiefly struck him was the yellowing of the light. It
was now positively sulphurous, thick with heat. They seemed to be
trapped, fixed, in some element thicker than air. Black figures, like
insects, swarmed across the beach, making for the shelter of the town.

Sarah, too, had turned to look back. He said quickly, 'No, don't let's
go back. It'll blow over.'

'You think that's gunna blow over?'

Reluctantly he said, 'Do you want to go back?'


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R R C P, N F, R A The I () N


'We'd be drenched before we got there. Anyway, I like storms.'

They stood looking out to sea, while the yellow light deepened.
There was no difference now between his skin colour and hers. Suddenly
Sarah clutched her head. 'What's happening?'

He could hardly believe what he saw. The coppery wires on the
surface of her hair were standing straight up, in a way he had never
believed any human hair could do. He pulled his cap off, and winced at
the tingling in his scalp.

'What is it?' Sarah said.

'Electricity.'

She burst out laughing.

'No, I mean it.'

Lightning flickered once, illuminating her yellow skin.

'Come on,' Prior said.

He snatched her hand and started to run with her towards the shelter
of some bushes. Scrambling up the last slope, he staggered, and would
have fallen if he hadn't grabbed a clump of marram grass. He felt a
sharp pain, and, bringing his hand up, saw a smear of blood on the
palm. Sarah pushed him from behind. They stumbled down the other
side of the slope, just as a sudden fierce thickening of rain blinded
them, and the first rumblings of thunder came.

A dense thicket of buckthorn offered the only possible shelter. Prior
stamped down the nettles and thistles that thronged the gaps, and then
held the thorns back for Sarah to crawl inside. He followed her in.
They crouched down, the rain scarcely reaching them through the
thick roof of thorn, though the wind rocked and beat the bush. Prior
looked round. The ground was dry, and very bare, the thorn too thick
to allow anything else to grow.

Sarah was feeling her hair. 'Is it all right?'

'It's going down.'

'So's yours.'

He grinned. ' 'S not surprising. Storm took me mind right off it.'

She laughed, but refused to reply. Prior was remembering childhood
games, making dens. An interior like this, so dark, so private, so easily
defended, would have been a real find. Mixed with this distinctly
childish excitement another excitement was growing. He no longer
felt hostile to her, as he'd done back there in the crowd. They seemed
to have walked away from all that. It was ages since he'd made love.
He felt as he sometimes did coming out of the line, listening to the
others talk and sometimes joining in, what they were going to do and


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how many times they were going to do it, though as far as he knew
everybody else's experience was like his own. The first time was almost
always a disappointment. Either stuck at half mast or firing before you
reached the target. He didn't want to think about Sarah like this.
Sarah rolled over on to her elbow and looked at him. 'This is nice.' He lay 
beside her. A few splashes of rain found his upturned face.
After a while he touched her hand and felt her fingertips curl round
his. Through the thickness in his throat, he said, 'I'm not pushing, but
if you wanted to, I'd make sure it was all right.'

After a while he felt her fingers creep across his chest, insinuating
themselves between the buttons of his tunic. He kissed her, moving
from her lips to her breasts, not looking at her, not opening his eyes,
learning her with his tongue, flicking the nipples hard, probing the
whorled darkness of her navel, and then on down, down, across the
smooth marble of her belly into the coarse and springy turf. His
nostrils filled with the scent of rock pools at low tide. He slipped his
hands underneath her, and lifted her, until her whole pelvis became a
cup from which he drank.


Afterwards they lay in silence, enjoying the peace, until footsteps
walking along the coastal path warned them that the storm was over.
The buckthorn scattered raindrops over them, as they crawled out on
to the grass.

They beat sand and twigs from each other's clothes, then started to
walk back along the coastal path.

'What we need is something to warm us up,' Prior said.

'We can't go anywhere looking like this.'

They stopped on the outskirts of the town, and tried more seriously
to set themselves to rights. They went to a pub, and leant back against
the wooden seat, nudging each other under the table, drunk with their
love-making and the storm and the sense of having secrets.

'I can feel your voice through the wood,' Sarah said.

Abruptly, the joy died. Prior became quite suddenly depressed. He
pushed his half-finished meal away.

'What is it?'

'Oh, I was remembering a man in my platoon.' He looked at her.
'Do you know, he sent the same letter to his wife every week for two
years.'
Sarah felt a chill come over her. She didn't know why she was being
told this. 'Why?'


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r i; c, i; n i; k a t i o n


'Why not?'

'How do you know he did?'

'Because I had to censor it. I censored it every week. We read all
their letters.'

He could see her not liking this, but she kept her voice light. 'Who
reads yours?'

'Nobody.' He looked at her again. 'They rely on our sense of honour.
Oh, we're supposed to leave them open so the CO can read them if he
wants to, but it would be thought frightfully bad form if he did.' Prior
had slipped into his mock public school voice, very familiar to Rivers.

Sarah took it at face value. 'You lot make me sick,' she said, pushing
her own plate away. 'I suppose nobody else's got a sense of
honour?'

He preferred her like this. On the beach, she was only too clearly
beginning to think that something had happened that mattered. He
wasn't going to admit that. A few grains of sand in the pubic hair, a
mingling of smells. Nothing that a prolonged soak in the tub wouldn't
wash away. 'Come on,' he said, putting down a tip. 'We'd better be
getting back.'


THIRTEEN


Burns paced up and down the waiting room. Rivers had told him he
intended to recommend an unconditional discharge, and though he
hadn't actually said the Board would accept the recommendation, this
had been very strongly implied. So there was nothing to worry about,
though when the orderly came and asked him to step inside, his stomach
knotted and his hands started to tremble. The Sam Browne belt, bunching
the loose fabric round his waist, made him look rather like a
scarecrow tied together with string. He got himself into the room
somehow, and managed a salute. He couldn't see their faces to begin
with, since they sat with their backs to the tall windows, but after
Bryce had told him to sit down, his eyes started to become accustomed
to the light.

There was a great deal of light, it seemed to him, floods of silver
grey light filtered through white curtains that stirred in the breeze, and


117
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I

m

the insistent buzzing of an insect, trapped. He fastened his eyes on
Rivers, who managed to smile at him without moving a muscle of his
face.

Major Paget, the third, external member of the Board, was obviously
startled by Burns's appearance, but he asked a few questions for
form's sake. Rivers scarcely listened either to the questions or to the
answers. The buzzing continued. He scanned the high windows, trying
to locate the insect. The noise was unreasonably disturbing.

Paget said, 'How often do you vomit now?'

Rivers got up and went across to the window. He found a bumble
bee, between the curtain and the window, batting itself against the
glass, fetched a file from the desk and, using it as a barrier, guided the
insect into the open air. He watched it fly away. Directly below him,
Anderson and Sassoon were setting off for their daily round of golf.
Their voices drifted up to him. Rivers turned back into the room to
find everybody, Burns included, staring at him in some surprise. He
smiled faintly and went back to his seat.


'This is getting to be a habit, isn't it?'

Prior, hands twined round the iron bars of the bedhead, smiled
without opening his eyes. 'Not one I enjoy.'

He hadn't regained the weight he'd lost during his last stay in sick
bay. The ribs showed clearly through the stretched skin. 'You were
lucky to get back. When did it start?'

'On the train. It was jam-packed. Everybody smoking.'

'Lucky the young woman with you kept her head.'

'Poor Sarah. I don't think she's ever had anybody pass out on her
before.'

'You realize you won't have the sick bay to yourself this time?'
Rivers indicated the other bed. 'Mr Willard.'

'The legless wonder. Yes, we've met.'

'Don't you have any sympathy for anybody else?'

'Are you suggesting I have any for myself?' He watched Rivers fold
the stethoscope. 'You know what you were saying about the greater
mental complexity of officers? How long do you think it'll take you to
convince that particular specimen of complexity that it hasn't actually
got a broken spine?'

'How's your voice, Mr Prior?'

Prior took a moment to register the direct hit. 'Fine. Problem over,
I think. I miss it. I used to enjoy my little Trappist times.'


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'Oh, I can believe that. I've often thought how nice it would be to
retreat into total silence now and again.'

'What do you mean "how nice it would be"? You do it all the
time.'

'I've arranged for a consultant to come and see you. A Dr Eaglesham.
He'll be in some time this week.'

'Why?'

'I need a measurement of your vital capacity.'

'Demonstrations twice nightly.'

'The other vital capacity. Try to get some rest now. Sister Duffy tells
me you had a bad night.'

Rivers had got to the door before Prior called him back. 'Why do
you need it?'

'This is the second time this has happened in six weeks. I don't think
we can let you go in front of a Medical Board without drawing their
attention to your physical condition.'

'If you're thinking of wangling permanent home service, I don't
want it.'

'I'm not thinking of "wangling" anything.' Rivers looked down at
Prior and his expression softened. 'Look, if this is what happens when
you're exposed to cigarette smoke on a train, how would you cope
with gas?'

'Well, obviously, I'm affected at lower concentrations than anybody
else. But then so what? I can be the battalion canary.' A pause. 'I'm not
the only one with asthma.'

'No, I'm sure you're not. I'm told there are cases of active TH in the
trenches. It doesn't mean it's a good idea.'

'I want to go back.'

A long silence.

'You can't talk to anybody here,' Prior said. 'Everybody's either lost
somebody, or knows somebody who has. They don't want the truth.
It's like letters of condolence. "Dear Mrs Bloggs, Your son had the side
of his head blown off by a shell and took five hours to die. We did
manage to give him a decent Christian burial. Unfortunately that
particular stretch of ground came under heavy bombardment the day
after, so George has been back to see us five or six times since then."
They don't want that. They want to be told that George - or Johnny or
whatever his name was, died a quick death and was given a decent
send off.' He said deliberately, 'Yesterday, at the seaside, I felt as if I
came from another planet.'


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'You can talk to people here.'

'It's the last thing this lot want to talk about. The point is, I'm
better.'

That's for the Board to decide.'

'You mean, you.'

'No-o. The Board. How are the nights? I mean apart from the
asthma? I know last night was bad.'

'I just refuse to play this game. I haven't enough breath to answer
questions you already know the answers to.'

'What's your subjective estimate of your nights?'

'Better.'

'Good. That was Sister Duffy's impression too.'

'Oh well, then . . .' Prior glowered. 'There's another reason I want
to go back. Rather a nasty, selfish little reason, but since you clearly
think I'm a nasty selfish little person that won't come as a surprise.
When all this is over, people who didn't go to France, or didn't do
well in France -- people of my generation, I mean -- aren't going to
count for anything. This is the Club to end all Clubs.'

'And you want to belong.'

'Yes.'

'You already do.'

'I broke down.'

'And that's why you want to go back? You're ambitious, aren't
you?'

Prior didn't answer.

'No reason why you shouldn't be. What do you want to do?'

'Politics.' He started back-tracking immediately. 'Of course, it's probably
useless. You can't get anywhere in this shitting country without
an Oxford or Cambridge degree.'

'Rubbish.'

'Easily said.'

'Not easily said at all. I didn't go to either.'

Prior looked surprised.

'I got typhoid in my last year at school. We couldn't afford Cambridge
without the scholarship. No, you can certainly get on without.
And things'll be freer after the war. If only because hundreds of thousands
of young men have been thrown into contact with the working
classes in a way they've never been before. That has to have some
impact.'

'Careful, Rivers. You're beginning to sound like a Bolshevik.'

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Tin just trying to give you sonic faith in your own abilities. And by
the way, I do not think you are a nasty selfish little person.'

Prior scowled ferociously, probably to hide his pleasure.

Till try to be here when Dr Eaglesham conies. Meanwhile, do you
think you could try to get on with Willard?'


Rivers had just started shaving when the VAD banged on his door.
She gasped something about 'Captain Anderson' and 'blood', and,
dreading what he would find, Rivers hurried downstairs to Anderson's
room. He found Anderson huddled in a foetal position, in the corner
by the window, teeth chattering, a dark stain spreading across the front
of his pyjamas. His room-mate, Featherstone, stood by the washstand,
razor in hand, looking at him with more irritation than sympathy.

'What happened?' Rivers asked.

'I don't know, he just started screaming.'

Rivers knelt beside Anderson and quickly checked that he wasn't
injured. 'Was he asleep?'

'No, he was waiting for the basin.'

Rivers looked at Featherstone. A thin trickle of blood was dribbling
down his wet chin. Ah. Rivers stood up, and patted him on the arm.
'Bleed elsewhere, Featherstone, there's a good chap.'

Featherstone - not in the best of tempers - strode out of the room.
Rivers went across to the basin, rinsed his flannel out, wiped the bowl,
gave the slightly blood-stained towel to the VAD and held the door
open for her to leave. 'There,' he said, looking across at Anderson. 'All
gone.'

Slowly Anderson relaxed, becoming in the process aware of the
stain between his legs. Rivers fetched his dressing gown and threw it
across to him. 'You'd better wrap this round you, you'll be chilly once
the sweating's stopped.' He went back to the washstand. 'Do you mind
if I borrow your flannel?'

He wiped the remaining shaving soap from his face, and checked to
see he hadn't cut himself when the VAD banged on his door. That
would not have been helpful. Out of the corner of his eye he saw
Anderson pull the coverlet up to hide the wet patch in the bed. When
Rivers next looked round, he was sitting on the bed, swinging his legs
and doing his best to look casual. Rivers sat down, far enough away
for Anderson not to have to worry about the smell. 'Still as bad as
that?'

'I suppose it's as bad as it looks.'
I

REGENERATION


"I
And this was the man who was going to return to medicine. 'You
know, we're going to have to start talking about what you realistically
want to do.'

'We've been through all that.'

'I can get you a month's extension in October. After that --'

'That's all right. I can't stay here for ever.'

Rivers hesitated. 'Is there any sign of your wife managing to get
up?'

Mrs Anderson's visit had been much talked of, but had still not
occurred.
'No. It's difficult with a child.'

Others managed. Rivers left Anderson to get dressed and went back       ^

to his own room to finish shaving. Now that the surge of excitement     S

had worn off, he felt tired and unwell. Quite unfit for work, though
the day would have to be got through somehow.

Willard was his first patient. He was following a regime which
involved early-morning exercises in the pool, and was wheeled into
the room, wet-haired and smelling of chlorine. He started at once. 'I
can't share a room with that man.'

Rivers went on kneading Willard's calf muscles.

'Prior.'

'You're not sharing a room with him, are you? You just happen to
be in the sick bay at the same time.'

'In effect I'm sharing a room.'

'That feels quite a bit firmer. Does it feel firmer to you?'

Willard felt his calf. 'A bit. He wakes up screaming. It's intolerable.'

'No, well, I don't suppose he likes it much either.'

Willard hesitated. 'It's not just that.' He bent towards Rivers. 'He's
one of those.'

Rivers looked and felt stunned. 'I really don't think he is, you
know. You mustn't take everything Prior says seriously. He likes to
tease.'

'He is. You can always tell.'

'Press against the palm of my hand.'

'I don't suppose you'd consider moving him?'

'No. And again. He's ill, Mr Willard. He needs the sick bay. If
anybody moves out, it'll be you.'

Willard was followed by an unscheduled appointment with Feather
stone, also demanding a change of room, though with more reason.
Nobody could be expected to share with Anderson, he said. The


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nightmares and vomiting were too bad, and the loss of sleep was
beginning to affect his nerves. All of this was true. Rivers listened and
sympathized and promised Featherstone a change of room as soon as
the September Boards had introduced some leeway into the system. At
the moment the hospital was so crowded there was no hope of a room
change for anybody.

Next, Lansdowne, an RAMC captain, whose long-standing claustrophobia
had been uncovered by his inability to enter dugouts. A
particularly testing session. Lansdowne was always demanding, though
Rivers didn't mind that, since he felt he was making progress. Then
Fothersgill, Sassoon's new room-mate, a fanatical Theosophist. He
spoke throughout in mock medieval English -- lots of 'Yea verilys' and
'forsooths' -- as if his brief exposure to French horrors had frightened
him into a sort of terminal facetiousness. He was forty-three, but with
his iron-grey hair, monocle and stiff manners he seemed far older. He
didn't take long. Basically, he was suffering from being too old for the
war, a complaint with which Rivers had a little more sympathy every
day.

Then a meeting of the Hospital Management Committee.
Fletcher, one of the two patient representatives, was a highly efficient,
conscientious man whose stay in France had ended when he'd developed
paranoid delusions that the quartermaster was deliberately
and systematically depriving the men of food. This delusion he had
now transferred to the hospital steward. The meeting went well
enough until the standard of hospital catering came under discussion,
and then Fletcher's delusions came to the fore. Tempers became heated,
and the meeting closed on an acrimonious note. It was an unfortunate
incident, since it would certainly fuel the administration's view that
patients should take no part in the running of the hospital. Bryce,
supported by Rivers, believed that patient participation was essential,
even if this meant that Craiglockhart committee meetings sometimes
developed a flavour all of their own.

After lunch, Rivers went along to Bryce's room to discuss Broad
bent. Broadbent had been to see his sick mother twice in recent months.
Towards the end of the second visit a telegram arrived from Broadbent,
saying that his mother had passed on, and asking permission to stay for
the funeral. Naturally, permission had been granted. In due course
Broadbent came back, wearing a black armband, and - rather less
explicably - the red tabs of a staff officer. The red tabs disappeared
overnight, but the black armband remained. For some days after that


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REGENERATION


1

Broadbent sat around the patients common room, pink-eyed and
sorrowful, being consoled by the VADs. This happy state of affairs
came to a close when Mrs Broadbent arrived, demanding to know
why she never heard from her son. Broadbent was now upstairs, in a
locked room. It was not easy to see how a court-martial could be
avoided.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on a succession of young men.
Rivers, by now feeling quite ill, was carried through it only by his
perception that some at least were showing signs of improvement.
One young man in particular, who'd broken down after finding the
mutilated body of his friend, had become dramatically better in the last
few weeks.

After dinner, Rivers decided to abandon the paperwork he ought to
have been doing and have an early night. No bath tonight, he decided,
he was too tired. He got between the sheets and stretched out his legs,
thinking he'd never been so glad to be in a bed in his life. After a while he 
pushed the window further open and lay listening to the rain, a soft
hushing sound that seemed to fill the room. Soon, still listening, he
drifted off to sleep.

He was woken at two am by a pain in his chest. At first he tried
to convince himself it was indigestion, but the leaping and pounding
of his heart soon suggested other, more worrying possibilities. He
pulled himself up, and concentrated on breathing slowly and
quietly.

The wind had risen while he was asleep, and rain pelted the glass. All
over the hospital, he knew, men would be lying awake, listening to the
rain and the wind, thinking of their battalions sinking deeper into the
mud. Bad weather was bad for the nerves. Tomorrow would not be
an easy day.

An hour later he would have given anything for tomorrow to
arrive. He was getting all the familiar symptoms. Sweating, a constant
need to urinate, breathlessness, the sense of blood not flowing but
squeezing through veins. The slightest movement caused his heart to
pound. He was relieved when dawn came and it was possible to
summon the orderly.

Bryce arrived shortly afterwards, brisk and sympathetic. He
produced a stethoscope, and told Rivers to take his pyjama jacket off.
The stethoscope moved across his chest. He sat up, leant forward and
felt the same procession of cold rings across his back. 'What do you think's 
wrong?' Bryce asked, putting the stethoscope away.


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'War neurosis,' Rivers said promptly. 'I already stammer and I'm
starting to twitch.'

Bryce waited for Rivers to settle back against the pillows. 'I suppose
we've all got one of those. Your heartbeat's irregular.'

'Psychosomatic.'

'And, as we keep telling the patients, psychosomatic symptoms are
REAL. I think you should take some leave.'

Rivers shook his head. 'No, I --'

'That wasn't a suggestion.'

'Oh. I've got the September reports to do. If I do nothing else, I've
got to do those.'

Bryce had started to smile. 'There's never going to be a convenient
time, is there? Three weeks starting this weekend.'

A mutinous silence.

'That gives you time to do the reports, provided you don't see
patients. All right?' Bryce patted the coverlet and stood up. 'I'll tell
Miss Crowe to put a notice up.'


Rivers was going on leave. He hadn't been down to dinner for the past
few days, but he was there tonight, Sassoon saw, looking rather better
than he'd done recently, though still very tired. The MO's table was
the noisiest in the room. Even at this distance you could distinguish
Brock's high, reedy voice, Maclntyre's broad Glaswegian, Bryce's
Edinburgh, Ruggles's American, and Rivers, who, when he got
excited in a discussion, as he often did, sounded rather like a soda
water syphon going off. Nobody, listening to him now, would have
thought him capable of those endless silences.

Fothersgill, his long nose twitching fastidiously, had started to complain
about the soup. 'Nay, verily,' he said. 'A man knoweth not what
manner of thing he eateth.' He laughed as he said it, the laugh of a man
who takes small discomforts very seriously indeed. Sassoon, marooned
between two particularly bad stammerers, felt no need to take part in
the conversation. Instead, he twisted round in his seat and looked for Owen , 
remembering the last poem he'd been shown. 'Out there, we've
walked quite friendly up to Death;/Sat down and eaten with him, cool and
bland --/Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand . . .' Precisely, Sassoon
thought. And now we complain about the soup. Or rather, they do.

After dinner he went straight to Owen's room. 'Do you mind?' he
said. 'I'm on the run from Theosophy.'

Owen was already clearing papers from the chair. 'No, come in.'


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RFGFNF.RATION


1

'I can't stay in the same room with him.'

'You should ask Rivers for a change.'

'Too late. He goes tomorrow. Anyway, I wouldn't want to bother
him. Have you got anything for me?'

This.'

Sassoon took the sheet and read the whole poem through twice,
then returned to the first two lines.


What minute-bells for these who die so fast?

--      Only the monstrous/solemn anger of our guns.


'I thought "passing" bells,' Owen said.

'Hm. Though if you lose "minute" you realize how weak "fast" is.
"Only the monstrous anger . . ." '

' "Solemn'?"

' "Only the solemn anger of our guns." Owen, for God's sake, this is
War Office propaganda.'

'No, it's not.'

'Read that line.'

Owen read. 'Well, it certainly isn't meant to be.'

'I suppose what you've got to decide is who are "these"? The British
dead? Because if they're British, then our guns is. . .'

Owen shook his head. 'All the dead.'

'Let's start there.' Sassoon crossed out 'our' and pencilled in 'the'.
'You're sure that's what you want? It isn't a minor change.'

'No, I know. If it's "the", it's got to be "monstrous".'

'Agreed.' Sassoon crossed out 'solemn'. 'So:


What passing-bells for these who die . . . so fast?

--      Only the monstrous anger of the guns.


'Well, there's nothing wrong with the second line.'

'"In herds"?'

'Better.'

They worked on the poem for half an hour. The wind had been
rising all evening, and the thin curtain billowed in the draught. At one
point Sassoon looked up and said, 'What's that noise?'

'The wind.' Owen was trying to find the precise word for the sound
of shells, and the wind was a distraction he'd been trying to ignore.

'No, that.'

Owen listened. 'I can't hear anything.'

'That tapping.'


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REGENERATION


Owen listened again. 'No.'

'Must be imagining things.' Sassoon listened again, then said, 'They
don't wail. They hiss.'

'No, these are going right over.'

'That's right. They hiss.' He looked at Owen. 'I hear hissing.'

' You hear tapping.'

The wind went on rising all evening. By the time Sassoon left
Owen's room, it was wailing round the building, moaning down
chimneys, snapping branches off trees with a crack like rifle fire. All
over the decayed hydro, badly fitting windows rattled and thumped,
and Sassoon, passing several of his 'fellow breakdowns' in the corridor,
thought they looked even more 'mental' than usual.

His own room was empty. He got into bed and lay reading while he
waited for Fothersgill to return from his bridge session. As soon as he
entered the room, Sassoon rolled over and pretended to be asleep. A
tuneless whistling ensued, punctuated by grunts as Fothersgill bent
over his shaving mirror and tweezed hairs out of his nostrils.

At last the light was out. Sassoon lay on his back, listening to the
roar of wind and rain. Again he heard tapping, a distinct, purposeful
sound, quite unlike the random buffeting of the wind. On such a night
it was impossible not to think of the battalion. He listened to the surge
and rumble of the storm, and his mind filled with memories of his last
few weeks in France. He saw his platoon again, and ran through their
names - not a particularly difficult feat, since no fewer than eight of
them had been called Jones. He recalled his horror at their physique.
Many of them were almost incapable of lifting their equipment, let
alone of carrying it mile after mile along shelled roads. He'd ended one
march pushing two of them in front of him, while a third stumbled
along behind, clinging to his belt. None of the three had been more
than five feet tall. You put them alongside an officer -- almost any
officer - and they seemed to be almost a different order of being. And
as for their training. One man had arrived in France not knowing how
to load a rifle. He saw them now, his little band, sitting on bales of
straw in a sun-chinked barn, while he knelt to inspect their raw and
blistered feet, and wondered how many of them were still alive.

The windows banged and rattled, and again, in a brief lull, he
thought he heard tapping. There were no trees close enough to touch
the glass. He supposed there might be rats, but then whoever heard of
rats tapping? He tossed and turned, thinking how stupid it was not to
be able to sleep here, in safety and comfort, when in France he'd been


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able to sleep anywhere. If he could sleep 011 a firestep in drenching rani,
surely he could sleep now . . .

He woke to find Orme standing immediately inside the door. He
wasn't surprised, he assumed Orme had come to rouse him for his
watch. What did surprise him, a little, was that he seemed to be in bed. Orme 
was wearing that very pale coat of his. Once, in 'C' company
mess, the CO had said, 'Correct me if I'm wrong, Orme, but I
have
always assumed that the colour of the British Army uniform is khaki.
Not . . . beige.' 'Beige' was said in such Lady Bracknellish tones that
Sassoon had wanted to laugh. He wanted to laugh now, but his chest
muscles didn't seem to work. After a while he remembered that Orme
was dead.

This clearly didn't worry Orme, who continued to stand quietly by
the door, but Sassoon began to think it ought to worry him. Perhaps if
he turned his head it would be all right. He stared at the window's pale
square of light, and when he looked back Orme had gone.

Fothersgill was awake. 'Did you see anybody come in?' Sassoon
asked.

'No, nobody's been in.' He turned over and within a few minutes
was snoring again.

Sassoon waited for the rhythm to be firmly established, then got out
of bed and walked across to the window. The storm had blown itself
out, though twigs, leaves and even one or two larger branches, scattered
across the tennis courts, bore witness to its power. The palms of his
hands were sweating and his mouth was dry.

He needed to talk to Rivers, though he'd have to be careful what he
said, since Rivers was a thorough-going rationalist who wouldn't take
kindly to tales of the supernatural, and might even decide the symptoms
of a war neurosis were manifesting themselves at last. Perhaps they
were. Perhaps this was the kind of hallucination he'd had in the 4th
London, but no, he didn't believe that. His nocturnal visitors there had
come trailing gore, pointing to amputations and head wounds, rather
like the statues of medieval saints pointing to the instruments of their
martyrdom. This had been so restrained. Dignified. And it hadn't
followed on from a nightmare either. He thought back, wanting to be
sure, because he knew this was the first question Rivers would ask.
No, no nightmare. Only that tapping at the window before he went to
sleep.

He got dressed and sat on the bed. At last eight o'clock came, and
the hospital became noisy as the shifts changed. Sassoon ran downstairs.


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REGENERATION


He felt certain Rivers would go to his office to check the post before
he left, and there might just be time for a few words. But when he
tapped on the door, a passing orderly said, 'Captain Rivers's gone, sir.
He left on the six o'clock train.'

So that was that. Sassoon went slowly upstairs, unable to account
for his sense of loss. After all, he'd known Rivers was going. And he
was only going for three weeks. Fothersgill was still asleep. Sassoon
collected his washbag and went along to the bathroom. He felt almost
dazed. As usual he turned to lock the door, and as usual remembered
there were no locks. At times like this the lack of privacy was almost
intolerable. He filled the basin, and splashed his face and neck. Birds,
sounding a little stunned as if they too needed to recover from the
night, were beginning, cautiously, to sing. He looked at his face in the
glass. In this half-light, against white tiles, it looked scarcely less ghostly
than Orme's. A memory tweaked the edges of his mind. Another
glass, on the top landing at home, a dark, oval mirror framing the face
of a small, pale child. Himself. Five years old, perhaps. Now why did
he remember that? Birds had been singing, then, too. Sparrows, twittering
in the ivy. A day of shouts and banged doors and tears in rooms he
was not allowed to enter. The day his father left home. Or the day he
died? No, the day he left. Sassoon smiled, amused at the link he'd
discovered, and then stopped smiling. He'd joked once or twice to
Rivers about his being his father confessor, but only now, faced with
this second abandonment, did he realize how completely Rivers had
come to take his father's place. Well, that didn't matter, did it? After
all, if it came to substitute fathers, he might do a lot worse. No, it was
all right. Slowly, he lathered his face and began to shave.


129
I
Part Three
I
FOURTEEN


'Hymn No. 373.'

With a rustling of paper the maroon-backed hymn books blossomed
into white. The congregation struggled to its feet. Children at the
front under the watchful eye of Sunday-school teachers, the rest,
middle-aged or elderly men, and women. A preliminary wheeze from
the organ, then:


God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform . . .


Since the Somme, this seemed to have become the nation's most popular
hymn. Rivers had lost count of the number of times he'd heard it
sung. He lifted his eyes to the flag-draped altar, and then to the east
window. A crucifixion. The Virgin and St John on either side, the
Holy Ghost descending, God the Father beaming benignly down.
Beneath it, and much smaller, Abraham's sacrifice of his son. Behind
Abraham was the ram caught in a thicket by his horns and struggling
to escape, by far the best thing in the window. You could see the fear.
Whereas Abraham, if he regretted having to sacrifice his son at all, was
certainly hiding it well and Isaac, bound on a makeshift altar, positively
smirked.

Obvious choices for the east window: the two bloody bargains on
which a civilization claims to be based. The bargain, Rivers thought,
looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies
are founded. If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who
am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice
your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be
able to exact the same obedience from your sons. Only we're breaking
the bargain, Rivers thought. All over northern France, at this very
moment, in trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors
were dying, not one by one, while old men, and women of all ages,
gathered together and sang hymns.


i33

REGENERATION


Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His works in vain;
He is His own interpreter
And He will make it plain. Amen.


The congregation, having renounced reason, looked rather the happier
for it, and sat down to await the sermon. Charles leant towards
Rivers and whispered, 'He doesn't usually go on very long.'

That whisper brought back the Sunday mornings of their childhood
when they'd drive to church in a pony and trap, and spent the sermon
looking up the naughty bits in the Old Testament, a task made easier
by the grubby fingerprints of those who had gone before. He remembered
Michal's bride-price: an hundred foreskins of the Philistines. As
an anthropologist, he still found that fascinating. He remembered the
smell of hassocks, and fastened his eyes on the flag-draped altar. They
would never come back, those times.

The vicar had reached the top of the pulpit steps. A faint light
flashed on his glasses as he made the sign of the cross. 'In the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost


Charles was busy with a great rehousing of the hens. They were to be
transferred from deep litter in the barn to the new coops in Two-acre
Field. This was best done after dusk when the hens were drowsy and
less likely to rebel. The brothers lingered over tea in the living room,
and then went out across the black, sodden, dismal mud of the yard
towards the large, low barn. Rivers was wearing a pair of old cord
breeches kept up with one of his brother's belts, visible proof that
Bertha's strictures on his loss of weight were justified. 'It isn't as if,' she
said at every mealtime, piling his plate high, 'you had it to lose.' 'He's
all right, Bertha, leave him alone,' Charles always said, though it made
no difference. Rivers still staggered away from the table feeling that
he'd been force-fed.

Charles carried the hens easily, his arms binding the wings fast to his
sides. Rivers, less expert, picked up two birds and set off after him. His
fingers dug through the fluffmess into the surprisingly hard quills, and
touched clammy flesh. The blood-red combs jiggled as he walked,
amber eyes looked up with a kind of bright vacuity. As he tried to
nudge the farmyard gate open with his elbow, one of them got its
wings free and flapped frantically until he managed to subdue it again.
God, I hate hens, he thought.

The chicken farm had been his idea, after Charles came back from


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REGENERATION


the East with malaria. Work in the open air, Rivers had advised. He
was paying for it now. As he left the shelter of the hedge and set off
across Two-acre Field, a great gust of 'open air' almost lifted him off
his feet. He felt responsible for the farm idea, and it wasn't paying. At
the moment they were only just breaking even. Mainly it was the
effect of the war. Feed was scarce and expensive, male help impossible
to get. The last land girl had stayed only long enough to work out the
distance to the nearest town, before discovering that some domestic
crisis required her immediate return home. But even without the war
it might not have been easy. Hens had a curious way of not thriving.
They seemed to be subject to a truly phenomenal range of diseases and
to take a perverse pleasure in working their way down the list.

It was almost completely dark now, a few faint stars pricking
through the clear sky. One hen, weaker than the rest, was being picked
on by the others. Its chest was bare of feathers and raw where they'd
pecked at it.

'I'll have to get that one out and wring its neck,' Charles said.

'Can't you just isolate her and then put her back in?'

'No. Once they start they never stop.'

They turned and walked back. McTavish, the farm cat, a black,
battered torn, met them at the corner of the yard and preceded them
across it. A notably morose cat, McTavish, a defect of temperament
Rivers attributed to his being perpetually surrounded by forbidden
flesh. He was fond of McTavish and slipped him titbits from his plate
whenever he thought Bertha wasn't looking.

They moved hens for an hour; slow, tedious work and then, as real
darkness set in, went back to the house. Bertha had been baking. An
earthenware pot full of bread dough stood by the kitchen range, and
the whole firelit room was full of the smell of warm yeast. 'You'll be
all right, won't you?' Bertha said, driving a hat pin neatly into her hat,
and craning towards the mirror to make sure it was on straight. She
and Charles were using Rivers as a chicken-sitter while they enjoyed a
rare night out.

'Don't fuss, Bertha,' Charles said.

'There's two loaves in the oven. They'll be done at ten past eight.
Turn them out, tap the base. If it sounds hollow, they're done. Do you
think you can manage that?'

'He's not a complete idiot, Bertha,' Charles called in from the hall.

Bertha looked doubtful. 'All right, then. Are we off?'

Charles came in wearing his hat and coat.


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REGENERATION


Rivers said, Till see if I
can get those accounts finished, Charles.'

'I wish you would,' Bertha murmured as she went past.

Once they'd gone, Rivers sat in the rocking chair by the fire, and
concentrated on not do/ing off. He hadn't dared not eat at dinner, and
the unaccustomed heavy meal and the firelight were making his eyelids
droop. Last spring when he'd been here, boxes of chicks had been put
to warm before the fire, and then the room had been full of the
pecking and scratching of tiny beaks and feet. He remembered them
struggling out of the eggs, how exhausted, wet and miserable they
looked, and yet curiously powerful, little Atlases struggling to hold up
the world. Now the same chicks were scruffy, bedraggled things running
in the coops, and the only sound in the room was the roar of flame.

He stretched out his legs and looked at the account book on the edge
of the kitchen table. He had letters he ought to write, the most urgent
being one to David Burns, who'd invited him to spend the last few
days of his leave at the family's holiday cottage on the Suffolk coast. As
far as Rivers could make out, Burns's parents wanted to talk about his
future, and although Rivers was not particularly anxious to do this he
found it difficult to envisage any future for Burns -- he thought it his
duty to accept. And then there was a half-completed letter to Sassoon,
but the accounts would have to come first. Ten past eight. He got the
loaves from the oven, tipped them out, and tapped the bases. Since
he'd never done this before, he had no way of knowing whether this
particular sound was 'hollow' or not. He decided they looked done, and
set them to cool on the tray. Then he fetched the shoe box in which
Charles stored his receipts and set to work on finishing the accounts. At
intervals as he -worked he looked up. The wind which had been blowing
a gale all day was beginning to die down. Once he heard an owl
hoot from the copse at the other side of Two-acre Field, a cold, shivery
sound that made him glad of the fire and the smell of warm bread.

When he'd finished, he took the oil lamp and went along to the
front room, intending to have another go at finishing his letter to
Siegfried. He put the lamp down on the desk. Ranged at intervals
around the walls, big heavy pieces of furniture squatted on their own
shadows. Most of them he remembered from his childhood home:
Knowles Bank. They were too big to fit into his sisters' cottage, he had
no need of them, and so Charles and Bertha had inherited them all.
Their presence here in different places, at different angles to the walls
and to each other, gave him an odd feeling of slipping back into an
out-of-focus version of his childhood.

I


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R F G F N F R A The I O N


A cold, unused room. All the farm paperwork was done in the
kitchen. He decided to take his letter along and finish it there, but then
lingered, fingering the leather of the desk top and looking at the
picture that hung above the empty grate. At Knowles Bank it had
hung in the same position, above the fireplace, in his father's study. As
a picture it could hardly have been more appropriate to his father's
dual role as priest and speech therapist, since it showed the Apostles at
Pentecost immediately after they had received the gift of tongues.
There they sat, each under his own personal flame, rendered in an
instant fluent, persuasive and articulate, not merely in their own language
but in all known tongues. Rivers remembered the bishop's
sermon one Pentecost when he'd explained that the gift of tongues as
bestowed upon the Apostles had absolutely nothing to do with 'the
gift of tongues' as bestowed regularly every Sunday on uneducated
riff-raff in various tin-roofed chapels about the diocese. The gift of
Pentecost had made the Apostles comprehensible in all known languages.
And there they sat still, looking, Rivers couldn't help thinking, most
unchristianly smug about it all.

He'd sat with other boys - his father's pupils - underneath that
picture for many a long hour, stumbling over the consonants of his
own language, remembering to hold down the back of his tongue,
project his breath in an even flow, etc., etc. Sometimes his father
would walk with him up and down the room, since he believed the
measured pace helped to regulate the flow of breath. Rivers hadn't
been the star pupil in those classes, not by any means. If anything he'd
made rather less progress than the rest, in spite of-- or because of? -- having 
his teacher with him all the time. The house was full of stammering
boys, any age from ten to nineteen, and at least it meant he was not
the only one. It had had another advantage too, he remembered.
While the boys were there, the Reverend Charles Dodgson stayed
away. Mr Dodgson didn't like boys. As soon as they left at Christmas
or in the summer holidays, he arrived, taking lessons every evening
after dinner. Rivers, from long exposure to other people's speech
impediments, could sum up the main features of a stammer almost as
quickly as his father. Dodgson found m difficult, and p in consonant
combinations, particularly in the middle of words, but his arch enemy
was hard c.

During the day there were boating trips on the river. Dodgson and
the four Rivers children, himself, Charles, Ethel and - Dodgson's
favourite - Katharine. He'd never enjoyed those trips much, and


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R E G l: N !: RATION


neither, he thought, had Charles, though probably that was no more
than the slight pique of two Victorian schoolboys, finding themselves,
for the first time in their lives, not of the preferred sex. Afterwards,
during those apparently endless summer evenings, there would be
croquet on the lawn, Rivers's father and Dodgson playing, the children
watching. There was a photograph of them on the desk, doing just
that, he and Charles leaning back against the garden roller, no doubt
getting grass stains on their white shirts, the two little girls, his sisters,
under the shade of the beech tree. If he tried hard, he could recall the
feel of the roller against his shoulder blades, the heat of the sun on the
back of his neck.

He had one other memory of Dodgson. One evening he'd crept
close to the open window of his father's study, sat down with his back
to the wall and listened to the lesson in progress. Why he'd done this
he couldn't now remember, except that it hadn't felt like eavesdropping,
since he knew nothing private was likely to be said. Perhaps he'd
just wanted to hear Dodgson put through the same routine he and the
other boys were put through. Perhaps he'd wanted to see him cut
down to size. Dodgson had just embarked on the sentence about the
careful cat catching the mouse - a simple enough tale, but already, in
Dodgson's mouth, threatening to become an epic. Rivers listened to
his father's advice, the same advice, basically, that he got, though
conveyed without that peculiar note of fraught patience. He thought
suddenly, this is nonsense. It doesn't help to remember to keep your
tongue down, it doesn't help to think about the flow of breath. So he'd
thought, sweeping away his father's life work in a single minute as
twelve-year-old boys are apt to do. He'd raised his head very cautiously
above the window sill, and seen his father sitting behind the desk -- this
desk -- his back to the window, clean pink neck showing above clean
white collar, broad shoulders straining the cloth of his jacket. He stared
at the back of his neck, at the neck of the man whom he had, in a way,
just killed, and he didn't feel sad or guilty about it at all. He felt glad.

Later that summer he'd given a talk to the speech therapy group on
monkeys. M was to him what c was to Dodgson, but he was interested
in monkeys, and still more interested in Darwin's theory of evolution,
which by this time had achieved acceptance in some circles. Knowles
Bank was not among them. His father had been furious, not because
Rivers had stumbled over every single m without exception -- though
indeed he had -- but because he'd dared suggest that Genesis was no
more than the creation myth of a Bronze Age people. Dinner that


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RF GFNFRATTON


night was a strained occasion. Father angry, mother upset, Charles
covertly sympathetic, sisters goggle-eyed and making the most of it,
Rivers himself outwardly subdued, inwardly triumphant. For the first
time in his life, he'd forced his father to listen to what he had to say,
and not merely to the way he'd said it.

And yet, Rivers thought, running his hands across the scarred leather
of the desk top, the relationship between father and son is never simple,
and never over. Death certainly doesn't end it. In the past year he'd
thought more about his father than he'd done since he was a child.
Only recently it had occurred to him that if some twelve-year-old boy
had crept up to his window at Craiglockhart, as he'd done to his
father's window at Knowles Bank, he'd have seen a man sitting at a
desk with his back to the window, listening to some patient, with a
stammer far worse than Dodgson's, try and fail to reach the end of a
sentence. Only that boy would not have been his son.

The unfinished letter to Siegfried lay on the desk. He'd got as far as a
comment on the weather, and there the letter had ground to a halt.
What he did so easily in conversation, always nudging Siegfried gently
in the same direction, and yet always avoiding any suggestion of pressure,
was a feat he apparently could not perform on paper. Perhaps he
was just too tired. He told himself the letter could wait till morning.

He picked up the lamp, pushed aside the heavy dark red curtains and
opened the window. A big dizzy moth flew in, with pale wings and a
fat, furry body, and began bumping against the ceiling. He leant out of
the window, smelling roses he couldn't see. The wind had fallen completely
now, giving way to a breathless hush. Faintly, over dark hedges
and starlit fields, came the soft thud-thud of the guns. When he'd first
arrived, suffering from the usual medley of physical and neurasthenic
symptoms -- headaches, dry mouth, pounding heart -- he'd confused
that sound with the throbbing of blood in his head. Then one night,
lying sleepless, he'd heard the water jug vibrating in the bowl, and
realized what it was that he kept hearing. Siegfried must have heard it
m June when he was at home convalescing from his wound.

Perhaps he'd better write tonight after all. He closed the window,
and sat down at the desk. The moth's huge shadow, flickering over the walls and 
ceiling, darkened the page, as, drawing the pad towards him,
he tore off the sheet and started again. My dear Siegfried . . .


'What draft is this?'

Lost count,' Owen said. 'You did tell me to sweat my guts out.'


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REGENERATION


'Did I really? What an inelegant expression. "What passing-bells for
these who die as cattle?" I see we got to the slaughterhouse in the end.'
Sassoon read through the poem. When he'd finished, he didn't immediately
comment.

'It's better, isn't it?'

'Better? It's transformed.' He read it again. 'Though when you look
at the sense . . . You do realize you've completely contradicted yourself,
don't you? You start by saying there is no consolation, and then you
say there is.'

'Not consolation. Pride in the sacrifice.'

'Isn't that consolation?'

'If it is, it's justifiable. There's a point beyond which --'

'I don't see that.'

'There's a point beyond which you can't press the meaninglessness.
Even if the courage is being abused, it's still . . .'

Owen leapt up, went to the drawer of his washstand and produced
the typescript Sassoon had lent him. He began leafing quickly but
carefully through it. Sassoon, watching, thought, he's getting better.
No stammer. Quick, decisive movements. The self-confidence to
contradict his hero. And the poem had been a revelation.

'Look, you do exactly the same thing,' Owen said, coming across
with the sheet he wanted.


O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.


'What's that if not pride in the sacrifice?'

'Grief? All right, point taken. I just don't like the idea of. . . making
it out to be less of a horror than it really is.' He looked down at the
page. 'I think you should publish this.'

'You mean in the Hydra?'

'No, I mean in the Nation. Give me a fair copy and I'll see what I can
do. You'll need a different title, though. "Anthem for . . ."' He
thought for a moment, crossed one word out, substituted another.


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REGENERATION


'There you are,' he said, handing the page back, smiling. '"Anthem
for Doomed Youth."'


The main corridor of the hospital stretched the whole length of the
building, with wards opening off on either side. From one of these
came an unpleasant smell which Madge said was gangrene, though
Sarah didn't believe she knew. Ward Fourteen was overcrowded, the
beds packed close together, men sitting up and staring with interest
at the two girls hesitating just inside the door. Most of them looked
reasonably well and cheerful. The trouble was that with their cropped
heads and hospital blue uniforms, they also looked exactly alike.

'I won't recognize him,' Madge said in a frantic whisper.

'Go on,' Sarah said, giving her a shove.

They started to walk up the ward. Madge stared from bed to bed
with a dazed look. She really mightn't recognize him at this rate, Sarah
thought, but then a voice cried, 'Madge!' A dark-haired man with a
gingery moustache was sitting up, waving and looking delighted to see
her. Madge walked forward cautiously, located the bandaged left arm,
checked to see that the swelling beneath the counterpane was the right
length and breadth to consist of two legs. He looked all right. He
planted a smacking kiss on Madge's lips, and Sarah looked away in
embarrassment, only to realize she was herself the object of amused
appreciation from all parts of the ward.

'Eh, look, I've brought you these,' Madge said. 'How are you?'

'I'm all right. Went right through,' he said. 'Just here.' He pointed
to his biceps. 'No gangrene, no nothing.'

'You were lucky.'

Till say. I'm gunna be in here two weeks they reckon, and then I'll
have a bit of leave before I go back.'

'This is Sarah,' Madge said.

'Pleased to meet you.'

They shook hands. Madge was now sitting by the bed, beginning,
cautiously, to bask in the admiration of her restored lover and to plan
what they would do on his leave. After this had been going on for a
while, Sarah began to feel distinctly green and hairy. Till just have a
walk round the grounds,' she said. 'It's a bit hot in here.'

'Yeh, all right,' Madge said.

Till see you at the main entrance, then. Half an hour?'

They hardly noticed her go. None of these men was badly wounded,
and several of them whistled and clicked their tongues as she walked


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R F- G f- N F. R A The I O N


past. The whole atmosphere of the ward was happy. The general air of
relief at being out of it was what chiefly came across, though she supposed
there must be other wards where the wounds were not so slight.

Outside, in the corridor, she looked up and down, realizing she
didn't know in which direction the exit lay. She was surrounded by
notices directing people to the pharmacy, the path lab, the X-ray
department, everywhere except the way out. She tried walking to her
left, but her way was blocked by a large notice saying: theatres. no
unauthorized personnel beyond this point. She turned right,
and shortly afterwards came to a corridor she thought she recognized,
and began to walk along it, but the feeling of familiarity soon vanished.
The building was enormous, and seemed to have no plan, no structure
to it, at all. To add to the sense of unreality most of the notices referred
to its civilian use before the war. Maternity, she read, and then the
swing doors banged open to reveal beds full of people who were most
unlikely ever to give birth.

Obviously she ought to stop and ask somebody, but then everybody
seemed to be in such a hurry, and so grim-faced. At last she found a
door that led out to the grounds at the back of the hospital, where the
tall chimney of an incinerator dribbled brownish-yellow smoke. Here,
a huge tent had been erected and this served as another ward. She
glanced into the interior, which was golden in the sunlight filtered
through the roof, but the atmosphere was close, stifling, a humming
darkness in which the clumsiness of bandages and the itch of healing
skin must be almost intolerable.

A constant traffic of nurses and orderlies passed between the tent and
the main building, and, feeling herself to be in the way, Sarah looked
around for somewhere she could find temporary refuge and not bother
anybody. There was a conservatory along the side of the hospital,
facing east so that at the moment it caught the full warmth of the sun.
Shadowy figures sat inside, and the door was open so she thought she
might perhaps sit there.

Once across the threshold she became aware of a silence, a silence
caused, she suspected, by her entrance. She was still dazzled by the
brightness of the light outside and the relative dimness of the interior,
and so she had to blink several times before she saw them, a row of
figures in wheelchairs, but figures that were no longer the size and
shape of adult men. Trouser legs sewn short; empty sleeves pinned to
jackets. One man had lost all his limbs, and his face was so drained, so
pale, he seemed to have left his blood in France as well. The blue of the


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hospital uniform looked garish against his skin. They'd been pushed
out here to get the sun, but not right outside, and not at the front of
the hospital where their mutilations might have been seen by passersby.
They stared at her, but not as the men had stared on the other
ward, smiling, trying to catch her eye. This was a totally blank stare. If
it contained anything at all, it was fear. Fear of her looking at the
empty trouser legs. Fear of her not looking at them. She stood there,
unable to go forward, and unable, for a few crucial moments, to turn
back, until a nurse bustled up to her and said, 'Who is it you want to
see?'

'I'm just waiting for a friend. It's all right, I'll wait outside.'
She backed out, walking away in the sunlight, feeling their eyes on
her, thinking that perhaps if she'd been prepared, if she'd managed to
smile, to look normal, it might have been better. But no, she thought,
there was nothing she could have done that would have made it better.
Simply by being there, by being that inconsequential, infinitely powerful
creature: a pretty girl, she had made everything worse. Her sense of
her own helplessness, her being forced to play the role of Medusa
when she meant no harm, merged with the anger she was beginning to
feel at their being hidden away like that. If the country demanded that
price, then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result. She
strode on through the heat, not caring where she was going, furious
with herself, the war . . . Everything.


Prior took off his clothes, put on the white hospital gown and sat on
the bed to await the arrival of the doctor. This was his second visit.
The first time he'd seen Eaglesham, the consultant, a big, kindly,
grizzled bear of a man who'd said very little but whom he'd trusted at
once. He'd raised his eyebrows when Prior blew into the Vitalograph
or whatever the machine was called, but he hadn't said what he
thought, and Prior had not wanted to ask. It wasn't going to be
Eaglesham today, though. A much younger man with a sallow skin
and slick dark hair was popping in and out of the other cubicles. Prior
looked down at his thin white legs. He didn't see why he had to take
all his clothes off. Were they trying to cater for some unforeseen
medical emergency in which his lungs had slipped into his pelvis? He
didn't like the way the gown fastened at the back. He didn't mind
displaying his wares, if he liked the other person and the time seemed
right, but he did like the illusion at least that the act was voluntary. He
could hear the doctor's voice in the cubicle next door, talking to a man


i43
REGENERATION


who couldn't complete a sentence without coughing. At last the curtains
were pushed aside and the doctor came in, followed by a nurse,
clasping a beige file to her bosom. Prior slipped off the robe and stood
up to be examined.

'Second-Lieutenant Prior.'

'Mister' he wanted to say. He said, 'Yes.'

'I see there's some question whether you're fit to go back. I mean
apart from the state of your nerves.'

Prior said nothing at all.

The doctor waited. 'Well, let's have a look at you.'

He moved the stethoscope all over Prior's chest, pressing so hard
that at times the stethoscope left overlapping rings on the skin that
flushed and faded to white. He thinks I'm shirking, Prior thought, and
the idea made him go cold.

'How are your nerves?' the doctor said.

'Better.'

'Shell explosion, was it?'

'Not exactly.'

Not one word of what he'd told Rivers would he repeat to this
man.

'Do you think you're fit?'

'I'm not a doctor.'

The doctor smiled. Contemptuously, it seemed to Prior. 'Keen to
get back, are we?'

Prior closed his eyes. He had a picture of himself driving his knee
into the man's groin, and the picture was so vivid that for a moment
he thought he might have done it, but then he opened his eyes and
there was the sallow face, still smiling. He stared at him.

The doctor nodded, almost as if Prior had replied, and then slowly,
to avoid any suggestion of backing off, turned and made a brief note
on the file. It's all bluff, Prior thought. It's what Eaglesham says that
matters.

He was in a torment as he got back into his uniform, reckoning his
chances, despising himself for reckoning them. He didn't thank Rivers
for any of this. I haven't lied to any of them, he thought. I haven't
made things out to be worse than they really are. He finished lacing his
puttees and stood up. The nurse came back with a card. 'If you tell
them at the appointments desk, three weeks.'

'Yes, all right. Thank you.'

He took the card, but walking down the long corridor afterwards


144
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he was tempted not to make the appointment. In die end he did, then
put the card away and strode out into the hospital grounds as fast as he
could. He thought he might buy himself something from the barrow
at the entrance, fruit or sweets, any little treat that might make him
feel better. Less contaminated.

He saw her before she saw him, and called out, 'Sarah.' She turned
and smiled. He'd thought about her a lot while he'd been in the sick
bay, remembering that time on the beach. Illness, once the worst was
over, always made him randy. What he'd forgotten, he thought now,
looking at the yellow face beneath the aureole of extraordinary hair,
was how much he liked her.

'What are you doing here?' she asked, obviously delighted.

'Having my chest examined.'

'Are you all right?'

'Fine -- thanks to you. What are you doing here?'

'I'm with Madge. Her fiance's been wounded.'

'Is he all right?'

'Yes, I think so.' Her face darkened. 'I've just seen some that aren't
all right. There's a sort of conservatory round the back. They're all sat
in there. Where the rest of us don't have to see them.'

'Bad?'

She nodded. 'You know I used to wonder how I'd go on if Johnny
came back like that. You always tell yourself it'd make no difference.
Easy said, isn't it?'

He sensed the anger and responded to it immediately. She might not
know much about the war, but what she did know she faced honestly.
He admired her for that. 'Look, do you have to wait for Madge?' he
asked. 'I mean, how long do you think she'll be?'

'Ages, I should think. She was virtually in bed with him when I left.'

'Well, can't you tell her you're going? She can walk back by herself
all right, can't she? It's broad daylight.'

She looked at him consideringly. 'Yes, all right.' She started to
move away. 'I won't be a minute.'

Left alone, Prior bought two bunches of chrysanthemums, bronze
and white, from the barrow near the entrance. They weren't the
flowers he would have chosen, but he wanted to give her something.
He stood craning his head for the first sight of her. When she arrived,
smiling and out of breath, he handed her the flowers, and then, on a sudden 
impulse, leant across and kissed her. The flowers, crushed
between them, released their bitter, autumnal smell.

*
H5

REGENERATION


They were burning leaves on Hampstead Heath where Rivers walked
with Ruth Head on the second day of his visit. Acrid smoke drifted
across their path and below them London lay in a blue haze. They
stopped by one of the ponds, and watched a coot cleave the smooth
water. 'You see over there behind those houses?' Ruth said. 'That's the
RFC hospital. And then over there -just in that dip there - that's the
Big Gun.'

'I'm glad you and Henry don't take refuge in the kitchen every
night. Everybody else seems to.'

'Can you imagine Henry cowering under the kitchen table?'

They smiled at each other and walked on.

'Actually the air raids are my guilty secret,' Ruth said.

'You mean you'd rather be under the table?'

'Oh no, quite the opposite. I enjoy them. It's a terrible thing to say,
isn't it? All that damage. People killed. And yet every time the siren
goes, I feel this immense sense of exhilaration. I'd really like to go out
and run about in it.' She laughed, self-deprecatingly. 'I don't of course.
But I get this feeling that the . . . the crust of everything is starting to
crack. Don't you feel that?'

'Yes. I'm just not sure we're going to like what's under the crust.'

They started to walk towards Spaniard's Road. Rivers said, 'You
know last night I got the distinct impression that Henry was plotting
something.'

'About you? If he is, it'll be something to your advantage.'

'You mean you know and you're not going to tell me?'

Ruth laughed. 'That's right.'

By Spaniard's Road, men in blue hospital uniforms sat in wheelchairs,
waiting for someone to come and push them away. Ruth was silent for a
while after they'd walked past. 'You know there was something I didn't
say last night.' She looked up at him. 'I think Sassoon's absolutely right.'

'Oh dear, I was hoping I might be able to introduce you. But if
you're going to be a bad moral influence --'

'Seriously.'

'All right, seriously. Suppose he is right? Does that mean it's a good
idea to let him go ahead and destroy himself?'

'Surely it has to be his choice?'

Tt (5 his choice.'

Ruth smiled and shook her head.

'Look,' Rivers said, 'I wear the uniform, I take the pay, / do the job. I'm not 
going to apologize for that.'


146

I
REGENERATION


'I'm not suggesting you should. All the same,' she said, turning to
look at him, 'you're tearing yourself in pieces as well as him.'

They walked in silence for a while. Rivers said, 'Is that what Henry
thinks?'

Ruth laughed. 'Of course not. You want perception, you go to a
novelist, not a psychiatrist.'

'I'm sure you're right.'

'No, you're not. You don't believe a word of it.'

'At any rate, I'm too cowed to disagree.'

That evening, left alone with Henry after dinner, Rivers watched
him massage the triangle of skin between the thumb and forefinger of
his left hand. 'Does that still bother you?'

'A bit. Cold weather. Do you know, I don't think I'd have the
courage to do that now.'

'No, I look back sometimes, and . . . I'm amazed. What are you
doing these days?'

'Gross injuries to the spinal cord. We've got a lot of interesting
material.' Head's mouth twisted. 'As we call the poor sods.'

Rivers shook his head. He'd seen Head too often on the wards to
believe him capable of that particular kind of research-orientated
callousness.

'It's an interesting atmosphere,' Head said. 'Dealing with physical
trauma and war neurosis in the same hospital. You'd like it.'

Tm sure I would.' A trace of bitterness. 'I'd like London.'

'There's a job going if you want it.'

'You mean there's a vacancy?'

'No, I mean there's a job for you if you want it. I've been asked to
sound you out. Psychologist with the Royal Flying Corps. At the
Central Hospital, Hampstead.'

'Ah. I wondered why Ruth was so keen on the Heath.'

'I imagine you'd find it interesting? Apparently there are some quite
striking differences between the rate of breakdown in pilots and in
other branches of the service.'

It sounds marvellous.' He raised his hands and let them drop. 'I just
don't see how I can.'

Why not? You'd be closer to your family, your friends, your research
contacts, you'd be able to get back to Cambridge at weekends. And . . .
I don't suppose it matters, but we'd be able to work together again.'

Rivers buried his face in his hands. 'O-o-o-oh. "Get thee behind
me, Satan."'


H7
1

REGENERATION            ,


^

'I am behind you. I was thinking of giving you a shove.

'I couldn't leave Bryce.'

Head looked incredulous. 'You mean, your CO?'

'He's in a difficult situation. We're in for a general inspection, and
... it all goes back a long way. Bryce is determined this time he's not
going to play their game. He's not going to parade the patients, or
polish the bottoms of the frying-pans, or pretend to be anything other
than just an extremely busy, overcrowded and I think bloody good
hospital.'

'What do they want?'

'They want a barracks. It's got all the makings of a really nasty
confrontation. I think Bryce may have to go.'

'Well, I hate to sound harsh, but wouldn't that rather solve the
problem? Your problem, I mean.'

'If it happened. Meanwhile, I think I can be ... of some use to him.'

'When is this inspection?'

'End of the month.'

'We'd need to know about the job . . . Well. Three weeks?'

Till think about it.'

'Good. And don't be too altruistic, will you? You're isolated up
there, it's not good for you.'

'I don't know about isolated. I never have a minute to myself.'

'Precisely. Come on, let's find Ruth.'


FIFTEEN


Aldeburgh was the end of the line, but. the train, as if reluctant to
accept this, produced, as Rivers stepped down on to the platform, an
amazing burst of steam. He stood, looking up and down, as the train's
hissing subsided into grunts, and the steam cleared. Burns had promised
to meet him, but his memory wasn't good, and, faced with the empty
platform, Rivers was glad he had the address. But then, just as Rivers
was resigning himself to finding the house on his own, Burns appeared, a tall, 
emaciated figure wearing a coat of stiff herringbone tweed that
reached almost to the ground. He'd obviously been running, and was
out of breath. 'Hello,' he said. Rivers tried to judge whether Burns


148
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looked better or worse. It was hard to tell. His face in the light of the
naphtha flares was as expressionless as beaten bronze.

'How are you?' they asked simultaneously, and then laughed.

Rivers decided he should be the one to answer. 'A lot better,
thanks.'

'Good,' Burns said. 'It's walking distance,' he added across his shoulder,
already striding off. 'We don't need a taxi.'

They came out of the station and began walking downhill, through
the quiet cold fringes of the town, past the church, through streets of
huddled houses, and out on to the front.

The sea was calm, almost inaudible, a toothless mouth mumbling
pebbles in the darkness. Instead of walking along the path, Burns
struck out across the shingle and Rivers followed, to where the tide
had laid bare a thin strip of sand. The crunch and slither of shingle
under their feet blotted out all other sounds. Rivers turned, and saw
the bones of Burns's face gleaming in the moonlight. He wondered
what he made of the tangles of barbed wire that ran along the beach,
with only two narrow channels left for fishing boats and for the
lifeboat to come and go. But Burns seemed not to see the wire.

They stood together at the water's edge, two black shadows on the
pale shingle, and small waves creamed over at their feet. Then the
moon came out from behind a bank of dark cloud, and the fishermen's
huts, the boats lined up in two short rows behind the wire, and the
heaped nets, cast shadows behind them almost as sharply edged as day.

They returned to the path and began walking along the terrace of
houses, which here and there had gaps. Many of the houses were
shuttered and had sandbags piled against the front doors. 'The sea's
been known to pay visits,' Burns said, following the direction of
Rivers's gaze. 'I was here once when it flooded.' Evidently sandbags
brought back no other memories.

'This is it,' he said a few minutes later, stopping in front of a tall but
extremely narrow house. At this end of the foreshore the sea was much
closer, turning and turning in the darkness. Rivers looked out and
caught a glint of white. 'What's along there?'

'The marshes. More shingle. I'll show you tomorrow.'

They groped their way into the hall, closing the door carefully
behind them before Burns switched on the light. His face, deeply
shadowed from the unshaded bulb, peered anxiously at Rivers. 'I
expect you'd like to go upstairs,' he said. 'I think I've given you a
towel . . .' He looked like a child trying to remember what it was that


149
REGENERATION


grown-ups said to newly arrived guests. He also looked, tor the first
time, deranged.

Rivers followed him up the narrow stairs and into a small bedroom.
Burns pointed out the bathroom and then went downstairs. Rivers put
his bag down, bounced on the bed to test the mattress, and looked
round. The walls were covered with paper of an indeterminate and
confusing pattern, the background colour faded to the yellow of an old
bruise. Everything smelled of the sea, as if the furniture had soaked it
in. It reminded him of childhood holidays in Brighton. He splashed his
face in the bowl, then, turning off the light, opened the shutters. His
room overlooked the sea. The wind was rising, and with each gust the
coils of wire twitched as if they were alive.

No sign of Burns's parents. Rivers had mistakenly assumed he was
being invited to meet them, since a large part of Burns's letter had
dealt with their anxieties about his future. But apparently not. This
was probably their room. The house was so narrow there couldn't be
more than one, or at the most, two small rooms on each floor.


The evening passed pleasantly enough. No mention of Burns's illness,
no mention of the war. These were evidently taboo topics, but they
talked about a great range of other things. Whatever else the war had
done to Burns, it had certainly deepened his love for his native county.
Suffolk flowers, birds, churches, he was knowledgeable about them
all. More recently, he'd become interested in the preservation of
country crafts. 'Old Clegg', who was apparently something of a local
character, had promised to teach him flint-knapping, and he seemed to
be looking forward to that. Even before the war he'd been very much
a countryman in his interests, rather like Siegfried in a way, though
without Siegfried's passion for hunting.

When the conversation turned to other matters, Burns was very
much the bright sixth former, idealistic, intolerant, naive, inclined to
offer sweeping generalizations as fact, attractive in the freshness of his
vision as such boys often are. Rivers thought how misleading it was to
say that the war had 'matured' these young men. It wasn't true of his
patients, and it certainly wasn't true of Burns, in whom a prematurely
aged man and a fossilized schoolboy seemed to exist side by side. It did
give him a curiously ageless quality, but 'maturity' was hardly the
word. Still, he was better than he'd been at Craiglockhart, so perhaps
his conviction that if he could only get back to Suffolk and forget the
war he would be all right had been proved correct. But then why am I


150
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here? Rivers thought. Despite Burns's reluctance to mention his illness,
Rivers didn't believe he'd been invited to Suffolk to talk about church
architecture. But it would be quite wrong to force the pace. Whatever
was bothering him, he would raise the matter in his own time.


Rivers woke the following morning to find the beach shrouded in
mist. He leant on the window sill, and watched the fishing boats
return. The pebbles on the beach were wet, though not from rain or
tide. The mist clung to them like sweat, and the air tasted of iron.
Everything was so quiet. When a gull flew in from the sea and passed
immediately overhead, he heard the creak of its wings.

Burns was already up, in the kitchen by the sound of things, but not,
Rivers thought, preparing breakfast. Nothing in the way of dinner or
supper had appeared the night before, and Rivers had hesitated, on his
first evening, to go into the kitchen and forage for food, though he
suspected that might be the only way of getting any.

He washed, dressed, shaved, and went downstairs. By this time the
mist on the beach had begun to thin, but it was cold for the time of
year, and the sight of a fire in the first floor living room was welcome.
He went down a further flight of stairs into the kitchen and found
Burns at the kitchen table with a pot of tea.

'There's some cereal,' he said, pointing.

He sounded shy again, though last night he'd begun to talk quite
freely by the end of the evening, just as Rivers, caught between the
roar of the fire and the roar of the sea, had started nodding off to sleep.
'I'm sorry I had to go to bed so early,' Rivers said, reaching for the
cereal packet.

"S all right.' Visibly, he remembered what it was he was supposed
to ask next. 'Did you have a good night?'

'Fine.' Rivers bit the reciprocal question back. He'd heard part of
Burns's night. Obviously, however hard Burns tried to thrust memories
of the war behind him, the nightmare followed.

The doorbell rang, and Burns got up to answer it. 'This is Mrs
Burril's day for sorting me out,' he said.

Mrs Burril was a remarkably silent person, but she managed, without
words, to make it clear their presence was superfluous.

Burns said, 'I thought we might go for a walk.'

The mist had thinned but not cleared. It moved in slow, cold currents over the 
marshes, where drainage ditches and sump holes reflected a
steely light at the sky. Reeds whispered, with a noise like the palms of


151
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hands being rubbed together. It was difficult to breathe, difficult even
to move, and they spoke in low voices when they spoke at all.

They walked along a narrow raised path that divided the marshes
from the river. Small yachts rode at anchor, the breeze just strong
enough to make their rigging rattle, not a loud sound, but persistent
and rather disturbing, like an irregular heart beat. Nothing else here
could disturb. The estuary lay flat and peaceful under a shrunken,
silver sun, and nothing moved, except the reeds, until a flight of ducks
whistled past.

Rivers had begun to realize how remarkable the area was. A strip of
land, at times no more than a hundred yards wide, divided the estuary
from the North Sea. Walking out along this strip, away from the
town, into the bleached shingle distances, you became aware of two
separate sounds: the roar and suck of waves on shingle, and the lulling
sound of the river among its reeds. If you moved to the left, the crunch
and chop of boots on shingle cut out the gentler river sounds. If to the
right, the tapping of rigging and the lapping of water dominated,
though you could still hear that the sea was there.

They turned and looked back at the huddled town. 'You know, I
love this place,' Burns said. 'I wouldn't like you to think I'd left
London just because of the raids. Actually it wasn't the raids, it was the
regular meal-times. You know, everybody sitting down to eat. Waiting
for food to be put in front of them. And father going on about the
war. He's a great believer in the war, my father.'

'Will they be coming to Suffolk at all?'

'No, I shouldn't think so. They're both very busy in London.' They
turned and walked on. 'It's best we don't see too much of each other at
the moment. I am not a sight for sore eyes.'

A squat, circular building had begun to loom up out of the mist. It
looked rather like a Martello tower, Rivers thought, but he hadn't known they'd 
been built as far north as this.

'This is the most northerly,' Burns said, slithering down the slope on
to the beach. Rivers followed him across the shingle and down into
the dank high moat that surrounded the tower. In its shadow, all water
sounds, whether hissing waves or lapping water, abruptly ceased. Ferns
grew from the high walls of the moat; and the tower, where the lookout
turret had crumbled away, was thronged with bindweed, but the
overall impression was of a dead place.

The sea must flood the moat at high tide, for all kinds of debris had
been washed up and left. Driftwood, the torn-off wing of a gull, bits


152
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of blue and green glass. A child would have loved ic, picking over
these pieces.

'We used to play here,' Burns said. 'Daring each other, you know.
Who could go all the way up?'

There was a door, but it had planks nailed across it. Rivers peered
through a crack and saw stone steps going down.

'Strictly forbidden. They were always afraid we'd get trapped in the
cellars.'

'I suppose they flood, don't they? At high tide?'

'Yes. There's all kinds of stories told about it. People chained up and
left to drown. I think we rather liked that. We used to sit down there
and pretend we could see ghosts.'

'It feels like a place where people have died. I mean, violent deaths.'

'You feel that, do you? Yes. I expect that's why we liked it. Bloodthirsty
little horrors, boys.'

Rivers wasn't sorry when they climbed the bank of shingle and
stood on the beach in the strengthening sunlight again.

'Do you feel up to a longish walk?' Burns asked.

'Yes.'

'All right. We can follow that path.'

They walked four or five miles inland, and came out into a wood
where great golden tongues of fungus lapped the trees, and a mulch of
dead leaves squelched underfoot. Rather to Rivers's surprise they
stopped at a pub on the way back, though no food was available.
Burns could drink apparently, and did, becoming in the process quite
flushed and talkative, though nothing was said about his illness.

They arrived back in the late afternoon with every bone and muscle
aching. Mrs Burril had obviously built up the fire before she left, and it
was rescuable, just about. Rivers knelt in front of it, sticking strips of
cereal packet through the bars, and blowing when he got a flame.
'Have you any newspapers?'

'No,' Burns said.

No, Rivers thought, silly question. Once the fire was burning well,
Rivers went out and bought cakes and biscuits for tea, which he served
in front of the fire, tucking in himself and not looking to see whether
Burns ate or not. He ate, sitting on the hearth rug, his wind-reddened
arms clasped about his knees, and the firelight playing on his face.

After the plates were cleared away, Rivers asked if he might work
for a couple of hours. He was writing a paper on the Repression of
War Experience which he was due to give to the British Medical


i53
REGENERATION


Association in December, and he knew, once he got back to Craiglock
hart, there would be very little time. He worked at the table in the
window, with his back to the room. He began by reading through
what he'd written so far on the evil effects that followed from patients
trying to suppress their memories of war experience, and was about to
start writing when it occurred to him he was in the same room as a
man who was doing just that.

Why do I go along with it? he thought. One answer, the easy
answer, was that he was no longer Burns's doctor. It was up to Burns
now how he chose to manage his illness. But then he'd gone along
with the suppression in Craiglockhart too. Whenever he'd tried to
apply to Burns the same methods of treatment he used with everybody
else, and used, for the most part, successfully, his nerve had failed him.
He'd told himself this was because of the peculiar nature of Burns's
experience, the utter lack of any redeeming feature the mind could
grasp and hold on to while it steadied itself to face the full horror. But
was Burns's experience really worse than that of others? Worse than
Jenkins's, crawling between the dismembered pieces of his friend's
body to collect personal belongings to send back to the family? Worse
than Prior's? What shall I do with this gob-stopper?

Corpses were everywhere in the trenches. Used to strengthen parapets,
to prop up sagging doorways, to fill in gaps in the duckboards.
Many of his patients treading on a dead body had been startled by
the release of gas. Surely what had happened to Burns was merely
an unusually disgusting version of a common experience. And I've
let him, Rivers thought - no, that was unfair, that was completely unfair -- 
I've let myself turn it into . . . some kind of myth. And that
was unforgivable. He wasn't dealing with Jonah in the belly of the
whale, still less with Christ in the belly of the earth, he was dealing
with David Burns, who'd got his head stuck in the belly of a dead
German soldier, and somehow had to be helped to live with the
memory.

He turned and looked at Burns, who was still sitting on the hearth
rug, though now he'd found himself a book and was reading, his
tongue protruding slightly between his teeth. As he felt Rivers's gaze,
he looked up and smiled. Twenty-two. He should be worrying about
the Tripos and screwing up his courage to ask a girl to the May ball.
And yet even now Rivers was nervous of raising the subject of his
illness. Burns's instinctive reaction had been to get back to this house,
to forget. And there had been some improvement under this regime,


iS4
REGENERATION


by clay at least, though evidently not by night. If he wants to talk, he'll
talk, Rivers thought, and turned back to his paper.

That evening, rather to Rivers's surprise, they went to the pub. He
was surprised because he'd been assuming Burns was isolated here, but
apparently all the locals knew him. They'd watched him growing up,
summer by summer. The family had been staying here when war
broke out. Burns had joined up along with most of the local lads.
They all remembered him in his uniform, in the first days and weeks of
the war, and perhaps that mattered a great deal. In London, Burns said,
on his first trip out in civilian clothes, he'd been handed two white
feathers.

Here, as soon as they pushed the bar door open, he was hailed by
several people, and by one man in particular: 'Old Clegg'. Clegg had
rheumy blue eyes, whose overflow had dried to a scurfy crust at
his temples; three brown but very strong teeth; unidentifiable stains
on his abdomen, and other stains, only too identifiable, further down.
His conversation was so encrusted with salty Suffolk sayings that
Rivers suspected him of deliberate self-parody. That, or leg-pulling.
Once he'd discovered Rivers was interested in folklore, he was well
away. Rivers spent a thoroughly enjoyable evening being initiated
into the folklore of rural Suffolk. By closing time, he was convinced
Clegg was possibly the most unreliable informant he'd ever had. For
sheer imaginative flights of fancy none of the Melanesians came
anywhere near him. 'That man is a complete fraud,' he said as they left
the pub.

But Burns disagreed. 'He's not a fraud, he's a rogue. Anyway as
long as he teaches me flint-knapping, I don't care.'


Next morning the weather had changed. At dawn there was a strip of
clear blue on the horizon, fading to yellow, but the sky darkened
rapidly, until, by mid morning, the clouds humped, liver-coloured,
and the sea was dark as iron. The wind had risen during the night,
sweeping away the last remnants of mist. At first it came in little gusts,
lifting the thin carpet in the hall, swirling dust in corners, then in blasts
that made waves on the surface of the estuary, rocking the yachts until
the rattle of their rigging became a frenzy, while on the beach great
waves swelled like the muscles of an enormous animal, rising to crests
that hung and seethed along their full length, before toppling over in
thunder and bursts of spray.

Rivers worked on his paper all morning, looking up now and then


i55
REGENERATION


to find the window mizzled with rain. Burns slept late, having had
another bad and very noisy night. He appeared just before noon, pink
eyed and twitching, and announced he was going to the White Horse
to see Clegg and arrange a definite time for his flint-knapping session.
Clegg was proving rather difficult to pin down.

'Git him up agin' a gorse bush, bor,' Rivers said, in a passable
imitation of Clegg's voice. 'He ont back away then.'

'That's girls in kissing season, Rivers.'

'Is it? Well, I shouldn't go kissing Clegg. I doubt if flint-knapping's
worth it.'

He was immersed in his paper again before Burns left the house.

He came back an hour later, looking rather pleased with himself.
'Thursday.'

'Good.'

'I thought we might go for a walk.'

Rivers looked at the rain-spattered glass.

'It's died down a bit,' Burns said, not altogether convincingly.

'All right, I could do with a break.'

The sea was racing in fast. The fishermen's huts were empty, the
boats hauled up high above the last stretch of shingle, with the fishing
nets in dark heaps behind them. Either they'd not been out today or
they'd turned back early, for Rivers had seen none of them come in.
Even the seabirds seemed to be grounded, huddled in the lee of the
boats, watching the town with unblinking amber eyes.

Faced with this sea, the land seemed fragile. Was fragile. To the
north, cliffs were scoured away, to the south, notice boards were
buried up to their necks in shingle. And the little Moot Hall that had
once stood at the centre of the town was now on the edge of the sea.

They walked as far as Thorpeness, then turned back, not talking
much, since the wind snatched the breath from their mouths. The sea
had covered the thin strip of sand, so they had to walk along the steep
shelf of shingle, a lopsided business that set the back as well as the legs
aching.

It took them two hours, there and back, and Rivers was looking
forward to the fire and -- if he could contrive it -- toasted tea cakes for
tea. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, he could do without, but afternoon
tea mattered. His boot squelched on something soft. Looking down, he
saw the place was littered with cods' heads, thirty or- more, with
blood-stained gills and staring eyes. It gave him no more than a slight 
frisson. Obviously the fishermen gutted their catch and threw the offal


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away. But Burns had stopped dead in his tracks and was staring at the
heads, with his mouth working. As Rivers watched, he jerked his head
back, the same movement that had been so common when he first
arrived at Craiglockhart.

'It's all right,' he said, when Rivers went back for him. But it was
obviously very far from all right.

They got back to the house. Rivers made tea, though Burns didn't
manage to eat anything.

After tea they went out and piled sandbags against the doors, struggling
with the heavy bags through driving rain and then struggling
again to close the storm shutters. The air was full of spray and blown
spume.

'We should've done that earlier,' Burns said, wiping the rain from
his face and blinking in the firelight. He was very concerned to pretend
everything was normal. He sat on the hearth rug, in his favourite
position, while the wind buffeted and slogged the house, and talked
about his drink with Clegg and various items of local gbssip. But he
jumped from topic to topic, assuming the connections would be obvious
when very often they were not. His mood, once he'd got over the
shock of seeing the cods' heads, seemed to be almost elated. He said
more than once that he loved storms, and he seemed, at times, to be
listening to something other than the roar of wind and sea.

Closing his eyes, Rivers could imagine the town entirely given over
to the storm, bobbing on the tide of darkness like a blown eggshell,
without substance or power to protect. Burns's conversation became
more and more disconnected, the jerking of his head more pronounced.
Piling up sandbags, followed by the nearest thing to a bombardment
nature could contrive, was not what Rivers would have prescribed. He
was prepared to sit up with Burns, if he wanted to stay up, but Burns
started talking about bed rather earlier than usual. Probably he took
bromides. Rivers would have liked to advise him to stop, since they
certainly wouldn't help the nightmares, but he was determined to let
Burns be the first to raise the subject of his illness.

The evening ended with nothing to the point having been said.
Rivers went to bed and undressed in the darkness, listening to the
wind howl, and imagined Burns in the room above, also listening. He
read for a while, thinking he might be too tense to go to sleep, but the
fresh air and the struggle with the wind along the beach to Thorpeness
had tired him out. His eyelids started to droop and he switched off the
light. The whole house creaked and groaned, riding the storm like a


i57
R F, G F. N F. R A The The O N


ship, but he enjoyed that. He'd always found it possible to sleep deeply
on board ship, though on land sleep often eluded him.


He was woken by what he immediately took to be the explosion of a
bomb. Less than a minute later, while he was still groping for the light
switch, he heard a second boom and this time managed to identify it as
the sound of a maroon. The lifeboat, no doubt. He was getting out of
bed to go to the window when he remembered that he probably
ought not to open the shutters, for he could hear from the whistling of
wind and lashing of rain that the storm had by no means blown itself
out. His heart was pounding, unreasonably, since there was nothing to
be afraid of. He supposed it was having come straight from London
with its incessant talk of air raids that had made him identify the sound
so positively as a bomb.

He lay back and a moment or two later heard footsteps padding past
the door of his room. Obviously Burns too had been woken up.
Probably he was going downstairs to make himself a cup of tea,
perhaps even to sit up the rest of the night.

The more Rivers thought about Burns sitting alone in the kitchen,
the more he thought he ought to get up. The sounds of the storm had
now been joined by running footsteps. He wouldn't find it easy to
sleep again anyway.

The kitchen was empty, and didn't seem to have been disturbed
since last night. He told himself that he'd been mistaken, and Burns
was still in bed. By now rather anxious, perhaps unreasonably so, he
went upstairs and peered into Burns's room. The bedclothes had been
pushed back, and the bed was empty.

He had no idea what he should do. For all he knew midnight walks
- or rather three am walks - were a habit of Burns's when the nights
were particularly bad. Surely he wouldn't go out in this. Rivers heard
shouts, followed by more running footsteps. Obviously other people
were out in it. Quickly, he returned to his own room, pulled on socks,
boots and coat, and went out into the storm.

A small group of figures had gathered round the lifeboat, three of
them holding storm lanterns. The overlapping circles of light shone on
yellow oilskins glistening with wet, as the men struggled to clear the
shingle from the planks that were used to launch the boat. Silver rain
slanted down into the lighted area, while beyond, pale banks of shingle
faded into the darkness.

A knot of bystanders had gathered by the hut, separate from the


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R F, G F. N E R A The I O N


labouring figures around the boat. Convinced that Burns must be
among them, Rivers ran across to join them, but when he looked
from face to face Burns was not there. A woman he thought to be
familiar, but couldn't immediately identify, pointed to the marshes
south of the town.

As he turned and began walking quickly towards the marshes, he
was dimly aware of the boat hitting the sea, and of the waves surging
up around her. He left the shelter of the last houses, and the wind,
roaring across the marshes, almost knocked him off his feet. He dropped
down from the path and walked along beside the river where he was
slightly sheltered, though the wind still howled and the yacht rigging
thrummed, a sound like no other he had ever heard. He could see fairly
clearly most of the time. Once, the moon freed itself from the tatters of
black cloud, and then his own shadow and the shadow of the tower
were thrown across the gleaming mud.

Looking at the tower, Rivers thought again how squat and unimpressive
it was, and yet how menacing. A resemblance that had merely
nagged at him before returned to his mind with greater force. This
waste of mud, these sump holes reflecting a dim light at the sky, even
that tower. It was like France. Like the battlefields. A resemblance
greater by night than by day, perhaps, because here, by day, you could
see things grow, and there nothing grew.

-- They were always afraid we'd get trapped in the cellars.

- I suppose they flood, don't they? At high tide?

Rivers climbed on to the path, trying to work out where the tide
was and whether it was rising or falling, but he could hear only the
crash of breaking waves and feel the drizzle of blown spume on his
face. In spite of his mud-clogged boots and aching thighs, he started to
run. As he neared the tower, a stronger blast of wind sent him staggering
off the path. He was slithering and floundering through mud,
calling Burns's name, though the sound was snatched from his mouth
and carried off into the whistling darkness.

He slid down on to the beach. An outgoing wave sucked shingle
after it, but the entrance to the moat was clear. He hesitated, peering
into the darkness, afraid that an unusually powerful wave might trap
him in there. He called 'David\ but he knew he couldn't be heard and
would have to go down, into the black darkness, if he were ever to
find him.

He groped his way into the moat, steadying himself against the wall.
It was so wet, so cold, so evil-smelling, that he thought perhaps the


i59
REGENERATION


tide had already reached its height and was now falling. At first he
could see nothing, but then the moon came out from behind a bank of
cloud, and he saw Burns huddled against the moat wall. Rivers called
'David' and realized he was shouting when there was no need. Even
the howl of the storm sounded subdued in the shelter of the moat. He
touched Burns's arm. He neither moved nor blinked. He was staring
up at the tower, which gleamed white, like the bones of a skull.

'Come on, David.'

His body felt like a stone. Rivers got hold of him and held him,
coaxing, rocking. He looked up at the tower that loomed squat and
menacing above them, and thought, Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing
nothing. Burns's body remained rigid in his arms. Rivers was aware
that if it came to a fight he might not win. Burns was terribly emaciated,
but he was also thirty years younger. His surrender, when it came, was
almost shocking. Suddenly his body had the rag-doll floppiness of the
newborn. He collapsed against Rivers and started to shake, and from
there it was possible to half lead, half push him out of the moat and up
on to the relative safety of the path.


At the kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket, Burns said, 'I couldn't seem
to get out of the dream. I woke up, I knew I was awake, I could move
and yet ... it was still there. My face was dripping. I could taste it.' He
tried to laugh. 'And then the bloody maroon went off.'

There were no electric lights. The power lines must be down. They
were talking by the light of an oil lamp that smoked and smelled, and
left wisps of black smoke like question marks on the air.

'I think we can do without this now,' Rivers said, walking across to
the window and pulling the curtains back. He opened the windows
and shutters. The storm had almost blown itself out. A weak light
seeped into the room, falling on Burns's red eyes and exhausted face.

'Why don't you go to bed? I'll bring you a hot-water bottle if
you've got such a thing.'

Rivers saw him settled into bed. Then he went out to the butchers
in the High Street, which he'd already noticed was surprisingly well
stocked, bought bacon, sausages, kidneys, eggs, took them home and
fried them. As he was spooning hot fat over the eggs, he remembered
his reaction when he was looking up at the tower. Nothing can justify
this, he'd thought. Nothing nothing nothing. He was rather glad not to
be faced with the task of explaining that statement to Siegfried.

He sat down at the table and began to eat. He was still chasing the


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last dribble of egg yolk with a triangle of toast when Mrs Burril came
in. She looked at the plates. 'Cracked, did you?' Two unpacked bags
later she added, 'Thought you might.'

'Is the boat back?'

'Not yet. I keep busy.'

Rivers went upstairs to check on Burns and found him still asleep.
The room was full of books, stacked up on tables and chairs, spilling
over on to the floor. Church architecture, country crafts, ornithology,
botany and - a slight surprise - theology. He wondered whether this
was an expression of faith, or a quest for faith, or simply an obsession
with the absence of God.

One of the reasons the books had to be stacked on tables and chairs
was that the bookcase was already full of other books: boys' annuals,
the adventure stories of Henty, Scouting for Boys. Games too: Ludo
and Snakes and Ladders, a bat for beach cricket, collections of pebbles
and shells, a strip of bladderwrack. All these things must have been
brought here, or collected here, summer by summer, and then outgrown,
but never thrown away, so that the room had become a sort of
palimpsest of the young life it contained. He looked at Burns's sleeping
face, and then tiptoed downstairs.


The lifeboat came back later that morning. Rivers looked out of the
living room window and saw it beached at the water's edge, in that
narrow space between the coils of tangled and rusting wire. He went
out to watch.

The men were laying down the flat wooden skids over which the
boat would be winched slowly back into place. A small group of
villagers, mainly relatives of the crew, had gathered and were talking
in low voices. The sea was choppy, but with none of the menace of the
previous night. A light drizzle had begun to fall, matting the surface
hairs on the men's jerseys and woollen caps.

When he got back, he found Burns stirring, though not yet up.

'Are they back?' he asked.

'Yes, they're hauling her up now.'

Burns got out of bed and came across to the window. The drizzle
had become a downpour. The lifeboat, now halfway up the beach, was
obscured by sheets of smoking rain.

'Be a load off Mrs Burril's mind. She's got two sons in the crew.'

'Yes. She said.'

'You mean she spoke?'


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'We had quite a chat. I didn't know the lifeboat was such a family
matter.'

'Oh, yes. You see it on the memorial in the church. Not a good
idea, really. From the woman's point of view.' A long pause. Then
Burns added, 'You get the same thing in a battalion. Brothers joining
up together.'

Rivers went very still. This was the first time Burns had volunteered
any information at all about France. Even in Craiglockhart, where he
couldn't altogether avoid talking about it, the bare facts of his war
service had had to be prised out of him.

'You know, you'll be writing letters and suddenly you realize you've
written the same name twice.'

Rivers said carefully, 'That must be one of the worst jobs.'

'You get used to it. I did it for eighty per cent of the company once.'

A long silence. Rivers was beginning to think he'd dried up, but
then he said, 'That was the day before the Somme. They got out there,
and there was this bloody great dyke in the way. You couldn't see it
from the trench because there were bramble bushes round it. And it
wasn't on the map. Everybody bunched up, trying to get across it.
German machine-gunners had a field day. And the few who did
manage to get across were cut to pieces on the wire. General came
round the following day. He said, "My God, did we really order men
to attack across that?" Apparently we were intended to be a diversion
from the main action. Further south.'

Slowly, Burns began to talk. He'd been promoted captain at the age
of twenty-one, and this promotion coincided with the run-up to the
Somme campaign. In addition to all the other strains, he'd been aware
of a widespread, though unvoiced, opinion in the company that he was
too young for the command, though in length of service he had been
senior.

The story was one Rivers was well used to hearing: healthy fear had
given way to indifference, and this in turn had given way to a constant,
overwhelming fear, and the increasing realization that breakdown was
imminent. 'I used to go out on patrol every night,' Burns said. 'You
tell yourself you're setting a good example, or some such rubbish, but
actually it's nothing of the kind. You can't let yourself know you want
to be wounded, because officers aren't supposed to think like that.
And, you see, next to a battle, a patrol is the best chance of getting a
good wound. In the trenches, it's shrapnel or head injuries. On patrol,
if you're lucky, it's a nice neat little hole in the arm or leg. I've seen


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men cry with a wound like that.' He laughed. 'Cry for joy. Anyway,
it wasn't my luck. Bullets went round me, I swear they did.' A pause.
'It was going to happen anyway, wasn't it?'

'The breakdown? Oh yes. You mustn't attribute breaking down to
that one incident.'

'I went on for three days afterwards.'

'Yes, I know.'

They talked for over an hour. Near the end, after they'd been sitting
in silence for a while, Burns said quietly, 'Do you know what Christ
died of?'

Rivers looked surprised, but answered readily enough. 'Suffocation.
Ultimately the position makes it impossible to go on inflating the
lungs. A terrible death.'

'That's what I find so horrifying. Somebody had to imagine that
death. I mean, just in order to invent it as a method of execution. You
know that thing in the Bible? "The imagination of man's heart is evil
from his youth"? I used to wonder why pick on that? Why his imagination'? But 
it's absolutely right.'

Rivers, going downstairs to make the tea, thought that a curious
thing had happened during that conversation. For the first time, Burns
had been able to put the decomposing corpse into some kind of perspective.
True, he hadn't managed to talk about it, but at least it hadn't
prevented him, as it so often had in the past, from talking about other,
more bearable aspects of his war experience. Yet, at the same time,
Rivers's own sense of the horror of the event seemed actually to have
increased. It was different in kind from other such experiences, he
thought, if only because of the complete disintegration of personality
it had produced. He was very fond of Burns, but he could discern
in him no trace of the qualities he must have possessed in order
to be given that exceptionally early command. Not that one could
despair of recovery. Rivers knew only too well how often the early
stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis
open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never
find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit
emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads
them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists
almost entirely of decay. Burns was young, after all. If today
really marked a change, a willingness to face his experiences in
France, then his condition might improve. In a few years' time it
might even be possible to think of him resuming his education,


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perhaps pursuing that unexpected interest in theology. Though it was
difficult to see him as an undergraduate. He had missed his chance of
being ordinary.


SIXTEEN


Rivers arrived back at Craiglockhart in the late afternoon of yet
another stormy day. This autumn seemed to have a store of such days,
slapping them down remorselessly, one after the other, like a fortuneteller
with a deadly pack of cards. The trees had already shed their
leaves. They blew across the tennis courts and, when Rivers pushed
open the swing doors, accompanied him into the hall.

Where a football match seemed to be in progress. A knot of struggling
backs and thighs gradually unravelled, as they became aware of
him standing there. On the black and white tiled floor lay a mud
brown, pork-pie hat, evidently belonging to a visitor. Rivers looked
round the group and found Sassoon. 'Careful with that hat, Sassoon,'
he said, and passed through on his way to his office.

Behind him, a much subdued Sassoon picked up the hat, punched it
into some semblance of its former shape, and restored it to the peg.
The other footballers slunk away.


Bryce was standing at the window of his room, looking out over the
leaf-littered tennis courts. Pausing in the doorway, Rivers thought he
looked older, but then he turned, and seemed as full of energy as ever.

'Did you get my letter?' Rivers asked.

'I did.'

'I've said I'll wait and see how things turn out.'

'Take it, for God's sake. It's quite obvious how things are going to
turn out. I don't expect to be here next month.' He smiled. 'Of course
they might appoint you.'

Rivers shook his head. 'No, they won't do that. I'm too identified
with you.'

' Will you take it?'

'I don't know. Probably.'

More than probably, Rivers thought, returning to his own room.


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The thought of Craiglockhart without Brycc was intolerable. He sat
behind his desk, and looked round the large, overfamiliar room. Whenever
he'd come back before, he'd had an almost physical sense of
the yoke settling on to his shoulders, beginning to chafe almost before
he was into the building. Not this time. He looked at his crowded
appointments book and actually managed to feel some affection
for it. The offer of a job in London, with its prospect of more frequent
contact with other anthropologists, had had the paradoxical effect of
making him realize how much he enjoyed his work here. It had
become of equal importance to him, and he'd begun to think of ways
in which the two interests could combine. The condensation and
displacement one encountered in the dreams of patients here -- might
not these mechanisms also be at work in the myth and ritual of primitive
people? At any rate it was an idea worth exploring. But these new
combinations only occurred because he no longer thought of his work
here as an interruption of his 'real' work. Far from it, he thought,
spreading his hands across his desk. The work he did in this room was
the work he was meant to do, and, as always, this recognition brought
peace.


'. . . we actually drove past your place.'

'You should've called in,' Sassoon said. 'Mother wouldn't've stood
on ceremony where you were concerned. She regards you as the
Saviour of the Family Name. From the Disgrace of Pacifism.'

'Prematurely, perhaps?'

No answer.

'Have you been able to think . . . ?'

'I haven't been able to think at all. Look, Rivers, I've never asked
you for anything. I've never asked or expected to be treated any
differently from anybody else.'

'I should hope not,' Rivers said. 'I don't know what the grounds
would be.'

Sassoon came to an abrupt halt. 'All right.'

'No, what were you going to say?'

'I was going to point out that the man in my room is driving me
stark, staring mad, but it doesn't matter.'

'That could be grounds for a room change. If true. For you as for
anybody else. What does he do? Does he sleep badly?'

'Snores like a newborn baby, if newborn babies snore.'

'So what does he do?'


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REGENERATION


'Preaches the consolations of Thcosophy in his own inimitable brand
of pseudo-medieval English.'

'I can see that might be irritating. Give me an example.'

'Friend of mine, Ralph Greaves. He's ... Is! Was a good pianist.
He's just had one arm amputated, and the other's almost useless. Do
you know what Fothersgill said? "It will assist his spiritual
development." '

'Perhaps it would have been wiser not to tell him?'

Silence.

'After all, you must've had some idea of the kind of response you
were likely to get?'

'I can't keep it in all the time.'

'Look, he's due to be boarded soon. Surely you can put up with the
inconvenience for another . . . what, ten days?'

'We had a row this morning. I pointed out the casualties for September
were 102,000 -- official figures. He said, "Yes, Sassoon, the Celestial
Surgeon is at work upon humanity." '

Rivers sighed. He was thinking that Sassoon's insistence of hammering
home the bitter reality was probably not doing Fothersgill much
good either. 'What does he think about you? Do you know?'

'I have a disturbed aura. Apparently.'

'Really?'

'Indigo. I'm glad somebody finds it amusing.'

'I was just thinking how useful it would be. Instant diagnosis.'

'I've woken him up once or twice.'

'Nightmares?'

'Not exactly.'

Sassoon was avoiding his eye, but then he often did at the beginning
of interviews. 'Do you want to tell me about it?'

'Oh, it was nothing. I just . . . saw something I couldn't possibly
have seen.'

He thinks I'll despise him for being irrational, Rivers thought. 'I did
once see . . . well, not see . . . hear something I couldn't explain. It was
on one of the Solomon Islands. On this particular island, the people
believe the souls of the dead go to a bay at the other side -- the spirits
come up to the house in canoes and carry the dead person's soul away.
So you have a kind of wake, and on this particular night we were all
crowded together, gathered round the corpse, waiting for the sound of
paddles. The whole village was there, all these dark brown intently
listening faces. And we listened too and asked questions in whispers.


166

I
REGENERATION


The atmosphere was unbelievable. And then a moment came when they heard the 
paddles. You saw this expression of mingled joy and
grief spread over all their faces, and of course we heard nothing. Until
the moment when the spirits were actually in the room, taking the soul
away, and then the whole house was suddenly filled with whistling
sounds. I could see all the faces. Nobody was making those sounds, and
yet we all heard them. You see, the rational explanation for that is that
we'd allowed ourselves to be dragged into an experience of mass
hypnosis, and I don't for a moment deny that that's possible. But what
we'd been told to expect was the swish of paddles. Nobody'd said
anything about whistling. That doesn't mean that there isn't a rational
explanation. Only I don't think that particular rational explanation fits
all the facts.'

After Rivers had finished there was a pause. Then Sassoon said, with
great difficulty, 'What happened to me started with a noise.'

'What sort of noise?'

'Tapping. It started in Owen's room and then when I went back to
my own room it started again. Owen didn't hear it. It didn't bother
me particularly, I just went off to sleep and . . . when I woke up,
somebody was standing just inside the door. I knew who it was. I
couldn't see the face, but I recognized his coat.' He paused. 'Orme.
Nice lad. Died six months ago.'

'You said "once or twice". The same man?'
'No. Various people.' A long silence. 'I know this must sound like
the the kind of thing I was seeing in London, but it isn't. It's . . .
nothing like that. In London they were clutching holes in their heads
and waving their stumps around. These are ... very quiet. Very restrained.'
He smiled. 'Obviously you get a better class of hallucination
round here.'

'What do you feel when you see them?'

Sassoon shrugged. 'I don't feel anything. At the time.'

'You're not frightened?'

'No. That's why I said they weren't nightmares.'

'Afterwards?'

'Guilt.'

'Do they look reproachful?'

Sassoon thought about it. 'No. They just look puzzled. They can't
understand why I'm here.'

A long silence. After a while, Sassoon roused himself. 'I wrote about
it. I'm sorry, I know you hate this.'


167
R P. G F. N r. R A The The O N


Rivers took the sheet of paper: 'I don't hate it. I just feel
inadequate.'


When I'm asleep, dreaming and drowsed and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Rumble and drone and bellow overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.


'Why are you here with all your watches ended?

'From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the line.'

In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;

And while the dawn begins with slashing rain

I think of the Battalion in the mud.

'When are you going back to them again?

'Are they not still your brothers through our blood?'


Sassoon, who'd got up and walked across to the window, turned
round when a movement from Rivers seemed to indicate he'd finished.
'It's all right,' he said. 'Don't feel you have to say something.'

But Rivers was not capable of saying anything. He'd taken off his
glasses and was dabbing the skin round his eyes. Sassoon didn't know
what to do. He pretended to look out of the window again. At last
Rivers put his glasses on again and said, 'Does the question have an
answer?'

'Oh, yes. I'm going back.'

A long indrawn breath. 'Have you told anybody else yet?'

'No, I wanted you to be the first.'

'Your pacifist friends won't be pleased.'

'No, I know. I'm not looking forward to that.' He was looking at
Rivers with an extraordinary mixture of love and hostility. 'You are,
though, aren't you? You're pleased.'

'Oh, yes. I'm pleased.'


168
Part Four
I
SEVENTEEN


Ada Lumb arrived on the nine o'clock train. Sarah met her at the
station, and they spent the morning looking round the shops. Or
rather Sarah looked round the shops, while her mother, by a mixture
of bullying, wheedling, cajoling, questions, speculations, wild surmises
and sudden, bitter silences, extracted the whole story of Sarah's relationship
with Billy Prior. By twelve, Sarah was glad to rest her feet, if not
her ears, in a cafe, where they sat at a table for two by the window and
ordered ham and chips. The alternative was steak and kidney pie, but
Ada was having none of that. 'You can't trust anything with pastry
wrapped round it,' she said. 'What they find to put in it, God knows.
You've only got to look in the butchers to see there is nowt.'

Sarah was not deceived. She knew once the waitress was out of
earshot she was in for a dollop of advice on rather more serious matters.
She wiped a hole in the condensation on the window. Outside the
people were moving shadows, the pavements of Princes Street jumped
and streamed with rain. 'Just in time,' she said.

'I suppose you let him in?'

'What?'

'You don't say "what", Sarah. You say "pardon".'

'What?'

'I said, I suppose you let him in?'

'Isn't that my business, Mam?'

'Would be if you were gunna cope with the consequences.'

'There aren't going to be any consequences.'

'You think you know it all, don't you? Well, let me tell you something,
something you don't know. In every one of them factories
there's a bloke with a pin. Every tenth one gets a pin stuck in it. Not
every other one, they know we're not fools. Every tenth.'

'Nice work, if you can get it.'

'Easier than bringing up the kid.' Ada speared a chip. 'The point is you gotta 
put a value on yourself. You don't, they won't. You're
never gunna get engaged till you learn to keep your knees together.
Yeh, you can laugh, but men don't value what's dished out free.


171

RFCFNFRATION


Mebbe they shouldn't be like that, mebbe they should all be different.
But they are like that and your not gunna change them.'

The waitress came to remove their plates. 'Anything else, madam?'

Ada switched to her genteel voice. 'Yes, we'd like to see the menu,
please.' She waited till the waitress had gone, then leant forward to
deliver the knock-out blow. 'No man likes to think he's sliding in on
another man's leavings.'

Sarah collapsed in giggles. 'Mam.'

'Aye, well, you can laugh.' She looked round the cafe, then down at
the table, smoothing the white table cloth with brown-spotted hands.
'Nice, isn't it?'

Sarah stopped giggling. 'Ych, Mam, it's nice.'

'I wish you worked somewhere like this.'

'Mam, the wages are rubbish. That girl didn't live at home, she
wouldn't eat.'

'She's not bright yellow, though, is she?'

'She not bright anything. She looks anaemic to me.'

'But you meet nice people, Sarah. I
mean I know some of the women you work with, and I'm not saying they're not 
good sorts --
some of them -- but you got to admit, Sarah, they're rough.'

'I'm rough.'

'You could've been a lady's maid if you'd stuck in. That's what gets
me about you, you can put it on as well as anybody when you like, but
it's too much bloody bother.'

The waitress returned with the menu.

'I don't think I could eat anything else, Mam.'

Ada looked disappointed. 'Aw, go on. It's not often I get a chance to
spoil you.'

'All right, then. I'll have the tapioca, please.'

Sarah ate in silence for a while, aware of her mother watching her.
At last, she said, 'Trouble is, Mam, the block chipped and you don't
like it.'

Ada shook her head. It was true all the same, Sarah thought. Ada,
ox-jawed, determined, ruthless, had struggled to bring up her two
girls alone, and yet, when it came to teaching the girls, she'd tried to
encourage all the opposite qualities. Prettiness, pliability - at least the
appearance of it - all the arts of pleasing. This was how women got on
in the world, and Ada had made sure her daughters knew it. As little
girls, Cynthia and Sarah had gone to the tin-roofed chapel at the end
of the road, but as soon as their bodices revealed curves rather than


172

I
R i: G P. N E R A The I O N


straight lines, Ada had called them to her and announced their conversion
to Anglo-Catholicism. The Church of St Edmund, King and
Martyr, served a very nice neighbourhood. There, Cynthia had obediently
ogled the young men in the choir, while Sarah, missing the point
completely, had fallen in love with the Virgin Mary. Ada's ambition
was to see her daughters go down that aisle in white, on the arm of
some young man with a steady income. If, subsequently, early widowhood left 
them with the income and not the man, then they were
indeed blessed. Whether Ada was a widow or not, Sarah didn't know.
It had never been made clear whether her father had departed this life,
the town, or merely his marriage. Certainly black bombazine figured
prominently in Ada's wardrobe, but then it was a material that conferred
an air of awesome respectability at minimal cost. A dispiriting
way to bring girls up, Sarah thought; to make marriage the sole end of
female existence, and yet deny that love between men and women was
possible. Ada did deny it. In her world, men loved women as the fox
loves the hare. And women loved men as the tapeworm loves the gut.
Nor did this view of life generate much sympathy for other women.
Ada despised the hares, those who 'got caught'. If a girl came into the
shop crying, she might sell her Dr Lawson's Cure, the Sovereign
Remedy for Female Blockages and Obstructions (ninepence a bottle,
and totally useless), but her sympathy ended there. The business of her
life was scratching a living together; her recreation was reading
romances, which she devoured three or four at a time, sitting in
her rocking chair by the fire, sucking mint humbugs and laughing till
her ribs ached.

'How's the tea hut going, Mam?' Sarah asked, pushing her plate away.

'Fine. I'm up there every day now.'

Ada had taken to selling tea to soldiers, young conscripts who did
their six weeks' training in one of the local parks before being shipped
out to France. The hut, which in peace time had been the boating lake
ticket office, she'd turned into a small cafe.

'How much do you charge?'

'Fivepence.'

'My God.'

Ada shrugged. 'No competition.'

You're a war profiteer you are, Mam. In a small way.'
Wouldn't be small if I could get me hands on some money. You
could do soup and all sorts, specially with the winter coming on. But
it's the same old story. You need money to make money.'


i?3

REGENERATION


Ada paid the bill, counting out the coppers with those thin, lined
hands that Sarah could never see without pain.

'You know Billy?' Sarah asked suddenly.

'No, I don't, Sarah. I've not had the pleasure of an introduction.'

'Well if you'll just listen. If he gets slung out the hospital this time,
he'll have a bit of leave, and we thought we might. . . We thought we
might drop in on you.'

'Really?'

'Is that all you can say?'

'What am I supposed to say? Look, Sarah, he's an officer. What do
you think he wants you for?'

'How should I know? Breath of fresh air, perhaps.'

'Bloody gale.'

'If he does come, you will be all right with him, won't you?'

'If he's all right with me, I'll be all right with him.' Ada slipped a
penny under the saucer. 'But you're a bloody fool.'

'Why am I?'

'You know why. Next time he starts waving his old doo-lally
around, you think about that pin.'


Sassoon arrived late to find Graves sitting by himself in the bar. 'Sorry
I'm late.'

'That's all right. Owen was keeping me amused, but then he had to
go. Somebody coming to see the printer.'

'Yes, that's right. I'd forgotten that.'

'Good game?'

'Not bad.' Sassoon detected, or thought he detected, a slight chill.
'It's the only thing that keeps me sane.'

'Last time you wrote you were complaining about playing golf with
lunatics.'

'Ssh, keep your voice down. One of them's just behind you.'

Graves turned round. 'Seems fairly normal to me.'

'Oh, Anderson's all right. Throws a temper tantrum whenever he
looks like losing half a crown.'

'You've been known to do that yourself

'Only because you were fooling around with a niblick instead of
playing properly.' He raised a hand to summon the waiter. 'Have you
had time to look at the. menu?'

'I've had time to memorize it, Siegfried.'

At the table Graves said, 'What do you find to talk to Owen about?

i?4


I
R F G F N F R A The I O N


He says he doesn't play golf. And I don't suppose for a moment he
hunts.'

'How acute your social perceptions are, Robert. No, I shouldn't
think he'd been on a horse in his life before he joined the army.
Poetry, mainly.'

'Oh, he writes, does he?'

'No need to say it like that. He's quite good. Matter of fact, I've got
one here.' He tapped his breast pocket. Till show you after lunch.'

'He struck me as being a bit shaky.'

'Did he? I don't think he is.'

'I'm just telling you how he struck me.'

'He can't be all that shaky. They're throwing him out at the end
of the month. He was probably just overawed at meeting another
Published Poet.'

A slight pause.

'Aren't you due to be boarded soon?'

'The end of the month.'

'Have you decided what you're going to do?'

Tve told Rivers I'll go back, provided the War Office gives me a
written guarantee that I'll be sent back to France.'

'I wouldn't have thought you were in much of a position to bargain.'

'Rivers seems to think he can wangle it. He didn't say "wangle" of
course.'

'So it's all over? Thank God.'

Tve told him I won't withdraw anything. And I've told him it's got
to be France. I'm not going to let them put me behind a desk filling in
forms for the rest of the war.'

'Yes, I think that's right.'

Trouble is I don't trust them. Even Rivers. I mean, on the one hand
he says there's nothing wrong with me and they'll pass me for general
service overseas - there's nothing else they can do - and then in the
next breath he tells me I've got a very powerful "anti-war complex". I
don't even know what it means.'

Till tell you what it means. It means you're obsessed. Do you know,
you never talk about the future any more? Yes, I know what you're
going to say. How can you? Sass, we sat on a hill in France and we
talked about the future. We made plans. The night before the Somme,
we made plans. You couldn't do that now. A few shells, a few corpses,
and you've lost heart.'

'How many corpses?'


175

R F G r N ! R A The I O N


'The point is ..."

'The point is 102,000 last month alone. You're right, I
am obsessed. I
never forget it for a second, and neither should you. Robert, if you had
any real courage you wouldn't acquiesce the way you do.'

Graves flushed with anger. 'I'm sorry you think that. I should hate
to think I'm a coward. I believe in keeping my word. You agreed to
serve, Siegfried. Nobody's asking you to change your opinions, or
even to keep quiet about them, but you agreed to serve, and if you want
the respect of the kind of people you're trying to influence - the
Bobbies and the Tommies -- you've got to be seen to keep your word. They won't 
understand if you turn round in the middle of the war and
say "I'm sorry, I've changed my mind." To them, that's just bad form.
They'll say you're not behaving like a gentleman -- and that's the worst
thing they can say about anybody.'

'Look, Robert, the people who've keeping this war going don't give
a damn about the "Bobbies" and the "Tommies". And they don't let
"gentlemanly behaviour" stand in the way either when it comes to
feathering their own nests.' He made a gesture of despair. 'And as for
"bad form" and "gentlemanly behaviour" - that's just suicidal
stupidity.'

Over coffee, the conversation changed tack.

'There's something I didn't tell you in June,' Graves said. 'Do you
remember Peter?'

'I never met him.'

'No, but you remember him? You remember about him? Well, he
was arrested. Soliciting outside the local barracks. Actually not very far
away from the school.'

'Oh, Robert, I'm sorry. Why didn't you tell me?'

'How could I? You were in no state to think about anybody else.'

'This was in July, was it?'

'Same post I got your Declaration in.' Graves smiled. 'It was quite a ;
morning.'

'Yes, I can imagine.'

Graves hesitated. 'It's only fair to tell you that. . . since that happened
my affections have been running in more normal channels. I've
been writing to a girl called Nancy Nicholson. I really think you'll
like her. She's great fun. The . . . the only reason I'm telling you
this is ... I'd hate you to have any misconceptions. About me. I'd hate
you to think I was homosexual even in thought. Even if it went no
further.'


176

I
RFC, EN P. RATION


It was difficult to know what to say. Tin very pleased for you,
Robert. About Miss Nicholson, I mean.'

'Good, that's all right, then.'

'What happened to Peter?'

'You're not going to believe this. They're sending him to Rivers.'

This was a bigger, and nastier, shock than Sassoon knew how to
account for. 'Why?'

'What do you mean, "Why?"? To be cured, of course.'

Sassoon smiled faintly. 'Yes. Of course.'


The munitions factory at night looked like hell, Sarah thought, as she
toiled down the muddy lane towards it, and saw the red smouldering
fires reflected from a bank of low cloud, like an artificial sunset. At the
gate she fell in with the other girls all walking in the same direction, all
subdued, with that clogged, dull look of people who'd just switched to
night shift and hadn't yet managed to adjust.

In the cloakroom, donning ankle-length green overalls, pulling on
caps, dragging at a final cigarette, were thirty or forty women. Smells
of sweat, lily-of-the-valley, setting lotion. After a while conversations
sprang up, the women appeared more normal, even jolly for a time,
until the supervisor appeared in the doorway, jabbing her finger at the
clock.

'Your mam get off all right, then?' Lizzie asked, as they were walking
down the stairs to the basement workroom.

'Got the seven o'clock. She'll be back by midnight, so it's not so bad.'

'How did it go?'

Sarah pulled a face. 'All right. You know, I swore I wasn't gunna
tell her about Billy, but she winkled it all out of me.'

'Well, she is your mam. She's bound to be worried.'

'Hm. All I could get out of her was: "What does he see in you?" 'S a
nice thing to say to your daughter, isn't it? I says, "A breath of fresh
air." As far as I can make out they're all disappearing up their own
arseholes up there.'

'Long as it's only their own,' Lizzie said.

'They're not all like that,' Sarah said.

'Biggest part are,' said Madge. 'Place I used to work before the war,
the son were like that. Oh, and when they found out you should've
heard Missus. She stomped and she shrieked. Chandelier were going like
that, I thought bugger were coming down. But you know he had no
sisters, so he never met lasses that way. Goes to school, no lasses. Goes


177

to university -- no lasses. Time he finally claps eyes 011 me, it's too late,
isn't it? It's gelled. And even the ones that aren't like that, they take one
look at the Missus and bugger off round the Club.' Madge strutted
along the basement corridor with a finger held below her nose, saying in
a strangled, public school accent, ' "I shall be dining at the Club tonight,
m'dear. Don't bother to wait up." Then he staggers in at two o'clock
and flops out on bed in dressing room. Beats me how they breed.'

Raucous laughter from the other women as they spilled into the
work room and sat down at the benches. The supervisor, a round
faced, bespectacled, crop-haired lady in a severely tailored suit, bore
down upon them. 'Do you girls ever intend to start work?'

They watched her walk away. 'Eeh, 1 hope a man never tries to
shove anything up her flue,' Lizzie said. 'Be cruelty to moths.'

Sarah pulled the first belt towards her and started to work. No
reason at all why they couldn't talk, since the task here required
no concentration. It was intended as a break from the very demanding
work on detonators, and from other jobs too, where masks had to be
worn. Rather badly fitting masks. On more than one occasion Sarah
had pulled hers away from her face and shaken out the yellow dust that
had collected inside it. She remembered her mother's strictures on her
appearance, the broad hints she'd dropped about handing in her notice
and going home to help with the tea hut. But REGENERATION


I
like it here, Sarah
thought. And then she corrected herself. You like it now because Billy's
here. You mightn't be so keen when he's gone.

She turned, cautiously, to avoid attracting the supervisor's attention,
and looked round. The women sat at small tables, each table forming a
pool of light under a low-hanging bulb. Apart from the work surfaces,
the room was badly lit and so vast that its far end disappeared into
shadow. All the women were yellow-skinned, and all, whatever their
colouring, had a frizz of ginger hair peeping out from under the green
cap. We don't look human, Sarah thought, not knowing whether
to be dismayed or amused. They looked like machines, whose sole
function was to make other machines.

Sarah's eyes fell on the next table, where the girls were close enough
to be identified. After a while she looked puzzled and leant across the
table to whisper to Lizzie. 'Where's Betty?'

'You may well ask,' Lizzie said. She sniffed and remained silent,
enjoying the moment of power.

'I am asking.'

Lizzie glanced round quickly. 'You know she's missed four times?'


178

I
REGENERATION


All the girls nodded.

'Tried everything,' Lizzie said. 'She was supping Dr Lawson's Cure
as if it was lemonade.'

'It is,' said Sarah.
'Well, she must've got desperate, because she stuck summat up
herself to bring it on. You know them wire coat hangers?'

Nods all round.

'One of them. She straightened the curved bit and --'

'We get the picture,' Sarah said.

'Yeh, well it's worse than that. Silly little cow shoved it in her
bladder.'

'Aw no.' Madge turned away as if she were going to vomit.

'She was in agony. And you know she kept begging them not to
send her to the hospital, because like she knew she hadn't come all
right. But anyway the girl she's lodging with got that frightened she
went and fetched the landlady. Well of course she took one look. She
more or less says, "Sorry, love, you're not dying here." Took her in.
And the irony of it is she's still pregnant. She looks awful.'

'You mean you've been to see her?' Sarah asked.

'Why aye. Went last night. You know, her face is all . . .' Lizzie dragged her 
cheeks down. 'Oh, and she says the doctor didn't half
railroad her. She was crying her eyes out, poor lass. He says, "You
should be ashamed of yourself," he says. "It's not just an inconvenience
you've got in there," he says. "It's a human being."'

Sarah and Madge were eager to know more, but the supervisor had
noticed the pause in Lizzie's work and came striding towards them,
though when she reached the table she found only silence and bowed
heads and feverishly working fingers flicking machine-gun bullets into
place inside the glittering belts.


On the night before a Board, Rivers took longer than usual over his
rounds, since he knew the patients whose turn it was to be boarded
would be feeling particularly tense. He was worried about Pugh,
who had somehow managed to convince himself, in spite of repeated
reassurances to the contrary, that he was to be sent back to France.

Sassoon, Rivers left till last, and found him lying on the bed in his
new room, wrapped in his British warm coat. It was needed. The
room was immediately beneath the tower and so cold that, in winter,
patients who'd sweated their way through a succession of nightmares
often woke to find the bedclothes stiff with frost. Siegfried seemed to


179

REGENERATION


like it, though, and at least now he had the privacy he needed to work.
Rivers took the only available chair, and stretched out his legs towards
the empty grate. 'Well, how do you feel about tomorrow?'

'All right. Still nothing from the War Office?'

'No, I'm afraid not. You'll just have to trust us.'

'Us? You're sure you don't mean "them"?'

'You know I'll go on doing anything I can for you.'

'Oh, I know that. But the fact is once they've got me out of here
they can do what they like. Pen-pushing in Bognor, here I come.'

Rivers hesitated. 'You sound rather down.'

'No-o. Missing Robert. Don't know why, we came quite close to
quarrelling.'

'About the war?'

'I don't know what about. Except he was in a peculiar mood.'
Sassoon stopped, then visibly decided to continue. 'He had a bit of bad
news recently.'

Rivers was aware of more going on in this conversation than he
could identify. Sassoon had been distinctly reserved with him recently.
He'd noticed it yesterday evening particularly, but he'd put it down to
pre-Board nerves, and the worry of not hearing from the War Office.
'From France?'

'Oh, no, something quite different. I did ask if he'd mind my telling
you, so I'm not breaking a confidence. Friend of his -- a boy he knew at
school and was very fond of -- in an entirely honourable, platonic Robert-like 
way -- got arrested for soliciting. Outside a barracks, actually
not very far away from the school. As far as I can make out, Robert
feels . . .' Sassoon came to a halt. 'Well. Rather as you might feel if you 
were . . . walking down a pleasant country road and suddenly
a precipice opened at your feet. That's how he sees it. Devastated.
Because, you see, this . . . this abominable thing must've been there all
the time, and he didn't see it. He's very anxious to make it clear that . . . 
he has no such disgusting feelings himself. We-ell.'

'So you were left feeling . . . ?'

'Like a precipice on a country road.'

'Yes.'

Sassoon looked straight at Rivers. 'Apparently he's being - the boy
-- sent to some psychiatrist or other.'

'Which school was this?'

'Charterhouse.'

'Ah.' Rivers looked up and found Sassoon's gaze on him.


180

I
R FGENFR A TION


'To be cured.' A slight pause. 'I suppose cured is the right word?'

Rivers said cautiously, 'Surely it's better for him to be sent to this
psychiatrist than to go to prison?' In spite of himself he started to smile.
'Though I can see you might not think so.'

'He wouldn't have got prison!'

'Oh, I think he might. The number of custodial sentences is rising. I
think any psychiatrist in London would tell you that.'

Sassoon looked downcast. 'I thought things were getting better.'

'I think they were. Before the war. Slightly. But it's not very likely,
is it, that any movement towards greater tolerance would persist in
wartime? After all, in war, you've got this enormous emphasis on love
between men - comradeship -- and everybody approves. But at the
same time there's always this little niggle of anxiety. Is it the right kind of 
love? Well, one of the ways you make sure it's the right kind is to
make it crystal clear what the penalties for the other kind are.' He
looked at Sassoon. 'One of the reasons I'm so glad you've decided to
go back. It's not just police activity. It's the whole atmosphere at the
moment. There's an MP called Pemberton Billing. I don't know
whether you've heard of him?'

Sassoon shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

'Well, he's going around London claiming to know of the existence
of a German Black Book containing the names of 47,000 eminent
people whose private lives make their loyalty to their country
suspect.'

'Relax, Rivers. I'm not eminent.'

'No, but you're a friend of Robert Ross, and you've publicly advocated
a negotiated peace. That's enough! You're vulnerable, Siegfried.
There's no point pretending you're not.'

'And what am I supposed to do about it? Toe the line, tailor my
opinions '

'Not your opinions. I think you told me once that Robert Ross
opposes the war? In private.'

I wouldn't want to criticize Ross. I think I know him well enough
to understand the impact those trials had on him. But what you're
really saying is, if I can't conform in one area of life, then I have to
conform in the others. Not just the surface things, everything. Even
against my conscience. Well, I can't live like that.' He paused, then
added, 'Nobody should live like that.'

'You spend far too much time tilting at windmills, Siegfried. In
ways which do you a great deal of damage -- which I happen to care


181
R E G F, N F, R A The I O N


about - and don't do anybody else any good at all.' He hesitated, then
said it anyway. 'It's time you grew up. Started living in the real
world.'


EIGHTEEN


Prior was not making a good impression. Getting a few simple facts
out of him was like extracting wisdom teeth. At first Rivers thought
Prior was simply being awkward -- always a fairly safe assumption
with Prior -- but then he noted the tension in his jaw and realized the
extent of the internal conflict that was going on. Prior had said he
wanted nothing more than to get back to France as soon as possible, to
get away from what he called 'the shame' of home service, and Rivers
had no doubt that was true. But it was not the whole truth. He also
wanted to save his life, and, in insisting on the importance of the
asthmatic attacks, Rivers had, perhaps cruelly, held out the hope that
he might be permitted to live. Small wonder, then, that Prior answered
questions in monosyllables and finally, when asked whether he felt
physically fit for service, said nothing at all, simply stared at Huntley,
unable either to claim that he was ill or to deny it. Watching him,
Rivers was filled with the most enormous compassion for his dilemma.
Poor little blighter, he thought. Poor all of them.

Outside in the waiting room Sassoon looked at his watch. They were
running almost an hour late and he wasn't even next. Pugh was next.
Pugh was a Welshman with prominent green eyes and the worst twitch
Sassoon had ever seen, even in Craiglockhart, that living museum of
tics and twitches. Pugh's consisted of a violent sideways movement of
the head, accompanied by a sound midway between a gasp and a
scream. He did this approximately every thirty-five seconds. Like everybody
else in the hospital, Sassoon's reflexes were conditioned by the
facts of trench warfare. It was almost impossible for him not to dodge
whatever it was Pugh was dodging. Something Owen had told him
about Pugh was hovering round the fringes of his mind. Yes, that was
it. Some kind of freak accident, a hand grenade bouncing off the wire.
Pugh had been picking bits of his platoon off his gas cape for an hour.

Sassoon looked at his watch again. Even allowing for the fact that


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nobody in their right mind could take long to decide whether Pugh
was fit for duty, he couldn't hope to be out of the place before six. He
was supposed to have tea with the Sampsons at four thirty. Even if he
left now and caught a tram immediately, he still wouldn't be on time.
It was too bad. People who were prepared to die had at least the right
not to be kept waiting. He closed his eyes again. He was so tired he
really thought if it wasn't for Pugh and that dreadful jerking, he might
have managed to nod off. He'd hardly slept at all last night.

In his breast pocket was a letter from Joe Cotterill, the Battalion
Quartermaster. Sassoon knew it almost off by heart. Joe's journey to
Polygon Wood with the rations, the ground as full of holes as a
pepperpot lid, nothing but mud and dead trees as far as the eye could
sec. They'd spent the night in a shell-hole, lost, under heavy fire.
Several of the ration party had been killed. But, said Joe, the battalion
got their rations. Reading that, Sassoon had wanted to rush back to
France at once, but then, right at the end of the letter, Joe had said: Buck up 
and get out of there. Go to Parliament. Surely they can't keep you
there against your will? The trouble was, Sassoon thought, sighing and
looking at his watch, that Joe's anonymous 'they' was his Rivers.

Thorpe arrived. 'D-d-d-do w-w-w-wwe kn-kn-know wwhwhat's
t-t-t-t-taking s-s-so 1-1-long?' he asked after a while.

Sassoon shook his head. Pugh shook his head too, though whether
in answer to the question it was difficult to tell. And suddenly Sassoon
had had enough. 'And I for one don't intend to stay and find out.'

He had a fleeting impression of Thorpe and Pugh with their mouths
open, and then he was striding out of the room, down the corridor,
through the swing doors and away.


'Pugh next, I think?' said Bryce.

'Hang on, old chap,' Huntley said. 'Got to pump ship.'

The door closed behind him. Bryce said, 'Where do you suppose he
finds these nautical expressions?' Receiving no reply, he turned to
Rivers.

Why we had to take an hour over that I shall never know.'

'Prior didn't help himself much, did he?'

Rivers didn't answer.

And at least you got what you wanted. In the end.'

The major came back, buttoning his breeches. 'All right, all right,'
he said, as if he'd been waiting for them. 'Let's get on.'

Pugh was quick and distressing. Since the orderly had gone off to


183

REGENERATION


have dinner, lowers himself went into the waiting room to summon
Sassoon. Thorpe was sitting there alone. 'Have you seen Sassoon?'

'He's . . .' Thorpe went into one of his paroxysms. 'Gg-g-gg
gone.'

'G-g-?' Deep breath. ' Where has he gone?'

Thorpe economized with a shrug. Rivers walked along to the patients'
common room and looked for Sassoon there, and instead found
Prior, sitting at the piano picking out a few notes. Prior looked up.
Rivers, thinking it was a long time to wait till the result was officially
announced, stuck his thumb in the air and smiled.

'All right, Thorpe,' he said, going back to the ante-room. 'You'd
better come in.'


Rivers came out of Thorpe's Board to find Sassoon still missing and
Sister Duffy hovering in the corridor, wanting to talk about Prior.
'Crying his eyes out,' she said. 'I thought he'd got permanent home
service?'

'He did.'

Rivers went up to Prior's room and found him sitting on the bed,
not crying now, though rather swollen about the eyes.

'I suppose I'm expected to be grateful?'

'No.'

'Good. Because I'm not.'

Rivers tried to suppress a smile.

'I told you I didn't want it.'

'It's not a question of what you want, is it? It's a question of whether
you're fit.'

'I was all right. It never stopped me doing anything the others did.'

'Now that's not quite true, is it? You told me yourself you were
excused running through the gas huts, because on the one occasion you
tried it, you collapsed. Your participation in gas-training exercises was
restricted to listening to lectures. Wasn't it?'

No response.

'It's all very well to joke about being the battalion canary, but it's
true, isn't it? You would be overcome by gas at much lower concentrations
than most people, and that could be very dangerous. And not just
for you.'

Prior turned away.

Rivers sighed. 'You realize the other man who got permanent home
service is throwing a party tonight?'


184

1
REGENERATION


'Good for him. I hope it's a good party.'

'Why do you hate it so much?'

Silence. After a while, Prior said, 'I suppose I'm not your patient any
more, am I?'

'No.'

'So I don't have to put up with this?'

It was on the tip of Rivers's tongue to point out that the relief was
mutual, but he looked at the swollen eyes and restrained himself.
'What don't you have to put up with?'

'The blank wall. The silences. The pretending.'

'Look. At the moment you hate me because I've been instrumental
in getting you something you're ashamed of wanting. I can't do much
about the hatred, but I do think you should look at the shame. Because
it's not really anything to be ashamed of, is it? Wanting to stay alive?
You'd be a very strange sort of animal if you didn't.'

Prior shook his head. 'You don't understand.'

'Tell me, then.'

'I'll never know now, will I? About myself. . .'

'But you do know. You were a perfectly satisfactory officer, until --'

'Until the strain got to me and I stopped being a perfectly satisfactory
officer. Where does that leave me?'

'With the whole of your life ahead of you and other challenges to
face.'

'If you were a patient here, don't you think you'd feel ashamed?'

'Probably. Because I've been brought up the same way as everybody
else. But I hope I'd have the sense, or -- whatever it is -- the intelligence 
to see how unjustified it was.'

Prior was shaking his head. 'Not possible. The hoop's there, you
jump through it. If you question it, you've failed. If it's taken away
from you, you've failed.'

'No, I don't see that. If it's taken away, it's out of your hands. You
didn't ask for permanent home service. You were given it, on the
basis of Eaglesham's report. Not my report. There's nothing in your
psychological state to prevent your going back.'

Prior didn't answer. Rivers said gently, 'Everybody who survives
feels guilty. Don't let it spoil everything.'

It's not that. Well, partly. It's just that I've never let the asthma stop
me. I was ordered to stay out of those gas huts, /.was quite prepared to
go through them. Even as a -- a child I was determined it wasn't going to
stop me. I could do anything the others did, and not only that, I could


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REGENERA I 1O N


beat them. I'm not suggesting this is peculiar to me, I -- I think most
asthmatics are like that. My mother was always pulling the other way.
Trying to keep me in. I shouldn't criticize the poor woman, I think she
probably saved my life, but she did use it. She wanted me in the house
away from all the nasty rough boys. And then suddenly here you are . . .'
He raised his hands. 'Doing exactly the same thing.' He looked at
Rivers, a cool, amused, mocking, affectionate, highly intelligent stare.
'Probably why I never wanted you to be Daddy. I'd got you lined up
for a worse fate.'

Rivers, remembering the nanny goat, smiled. He was rather glad
Prior didn't have access to his thoughts.

'Thanks for putting up with me.'

This was muttered so gracelessly Rivers wasn't sure he'd heard
correctly.

'I was an absolute pig.'

'Never.'

Prior hesitated. 'Would you mind if I looked you up after the war?'

'Mind? I'd be delighted. Though I don't see why you have to wait
till after the war. You can always write to me here. If-- if I've moved
on, they'll know where I am.'

'Thanks. I will write.'

At the door Rivers turned. 'If I don't see you again before you go,
good luck.'


It was an effort to talk at dinner, partly tiredness, partly Sassoon's
empty place. By now it was clear he'd deliberately skipped the Board.
He'd left the Sampsons at six o'clock, but hadn't yet returned to the
hospital. It was possible he was having dinner at the Club, putting off
the moment when he'd have to face Rivers, but he was impetuous
enough, and perhaps desperate enough, to take the train for London
and launch himself into some further crackpot scheme to stop the war.
Rivers knew the full extent of the dilemma that would face him if
Sassoon had deserted and did make another public protest. He would be
asked to take part in declaring him insane; they would never court
martial him. Not now. The casualty lists were too terrible to admit of
any public debate on the continuation of the war.

Rivers roused himself to take part in the conversation to find Major
Huntley riding one of his hobby horses again. Racial degeneration,
this time. The falling birth rate. The need to keep up what he called
'the supply of heroes'. Did Rivers know that private soldiers were on


186
REGENERATION


average_/H'c inches shorter than their officers? And yet it was often the
better type of woman who chose to limit the size of her family, while
her feckless sisters bred the Empire to destruction. Rivers listened as
politely as he could to the major's theories on how the women of
Britain might be brought back to a proper sense of their duties, but it
was a relief when dinner was over, and he could plead pressure of
work and escape to his own room.

He'd left a message with Sister Duffy that Sassoon was to be sent to
him as soon as he got back, no matter how late that might be. It was
very late indeed. He came in, looking penitent and sheepish.

Rivers said, 'Sit down.'

Sassoon sat, folded his large hands in his lap, and waited. His demeanour
was very much that of a keen, and basically decent, head boy who
knows he's let the headmaster down rather badly, and is probably in
for 'a bit of a wigging', but expects it to be all right in the end.
Nothing could have been more calculated to drive Rivers to fury. 'I'm
sure you have a perfectly satisfactory explanation.'

'I was late for tea with Sampson.'

Rivers closed his eyes. 'That's it?'

'Yes.'

'It would have been quite impossible for you to telephone Sampson,
and tell him that you were going to be late?'

'It didn't seem . . . courteous. It --'

'And what about the courtesy due to Major Bryce? Major Huntley?
Don't you think you at least owed them an explanation before you
walked out?'

Silence.

'Why, Siegfried?'

'I couldn't face it.'

'Now that does surprise me. Juvenile behaviour I might have expected
from you, but never cowardice.'

'I'm not offering excuses.'

You're not offering anything. Certainly not reasons.'

I'm not sure there are any. I was fed up with being kept waiting. I
thought if I was going to die, at least other people could make the
etfort to be on time. It was . . .' A deep breath. 'Petulance.'

'So you can't suggest a reason?'

'I've told you, there aren't any.'

'I don't believe you.'

'Look, I'll apologize. I'll grovel if you like.'


187
REGENERATION


'I'm not interested in your grovelling. I'd rather you told the truth.'

Sassoon wriggled in his chair. 'All right. I've had this idea floating
around in my mind, for . . . oh, for five or six weeks. I thought
if I could get myself passed fit and then go to London, I could see
somebody like . . . Charles Mercier.'

'Dr Mercier?'

'Yes.'

'Why on earth would you want to see him?'

'For a second opinion. He's all right, isn't he?'

'Oh, yes, you couldn't do better. Except that . . . if you'd just been
passed fit by the Board - why would you need to see Mercier?'

'So they couldn't say I'd had a relapse, if I went on with the protest.'

Rivers sat back in his chair. 'Oh, I see.'

Silence.

'And had you definitely decided to do that?'

'I hadn't definitely decided anything. If you want the reason I walked
out, that's probably it. It suddenly struck me that in a few hours' time
I'd be packing and I had no idea where I was going. And then at the
back of my mind there was the idea that if I went to Mercier I'd be . . .'

Rivers waited.

'Doing the dirty on you.'

'You could've had a second opinion at any time. I'd no idea you
wanted it. People whose psychiatrists tell them they're completely sane
don't usually ask for second opinions.'

'That is what they'd do, though, isn't it? Say I'd had a relapse?'

'Yes. Probably. I take it you've definitely decided not to go back?'

'No, I want to go back.'

Rivers slumped in his chair. 'Thank God. I don't pretend to understand,
but thank God.' After a while he added, 'You know the real
irony in all this? This morning I had a letter from the War Office. Not
exactly an undertaking to send you back, but . . . signs of progress.'

'And now I've gone and ruined it all by having tea with an
astronomer.'

'Oh, I don't suppose you have. I'll write to them tonight.'

Sassoon looked at the clock.

'Well, we don't want him hearing it from Huntley, do we? By the
way, late as it is, I think Major Bryce would still like to see you.'

Sassoon took the hint and stood up. 'What do you think he'll do?'

'No idea. Roast you, I hope.'


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REGENERATION


NINETEEN


Prior had never broken into a house before. Not that he was exactly
breaking into this one, he reminded himself, though it felt like it,
standing cold and shivering in the back yard, in a recess between what
must be, he supposed, the coalhouse and the shithouse. He wrapped his
coat more tightly round him and craned his neck to see the sky. Light
cloud, no moon, stars pricking through, a snap of frost.

He was waiting for the signal of the lamp at Sarah's window, but
she was a long time coming, and there was a chill inside him that had
nothing to do with the cold. The darkness, the nervousness, the
repeated unnecessary swallowing . . . He was back in France, waiting to
go out on patrol.

He remembered the feel of No Man's Land, the vast, unimaginable
space. By day, seen through a periscope, this immensity shrank to a
small, pock-marked stretch of ground, snarled with wire. You never
got used to the discrepancy. Part of its power to compel the imagination
lay precisely in that. It was the difference between seeing a mouth ulcer
and probing it with your tongue. He told himself he was never going
back, he was free, but the word 'free' rang hollow. Hurry up, Sarah, he
thought.

He was beginning to wonder whether she'd met her landlady on the
stairs, when a light appeared at the window. Immediately, he started to
climb, clambering from the rusting washer on to the sloping roof of
the scullery. Nothing difficult about the climb, the only hazard was the
poor state of the tiles. He shuffled along, trying not to make too much
noise, though if they did hear they'd probably think it was a cat.

Sarah's room was on the first floor. As he reached the main wall, he
stood up, cautiously, and hooked his fingertips into the crack between
two bricks. Sarah's window was perhaps three feet away, but there was
a convenient drainpipe. He swung his left foot out, got a toe-hold on
the drainpipe - fortunately in a better state of repair than the roof and
launched himself at the dark hole. He landed safely, though not
quietly, colliding with Sarah, who'd come back to see why he was
taking so long. They froze, listening for any response. When none
came, they looked at each other, and smiled.

Sarah was carrying an oil lamp. She set it down on the table by the
bed, and went to draw the curtains. He was glad to have the night shut


189
R E G F N F R A The I O N


out, with its memories of tear and worried sentries whispering. She
turned back into the room.

They looked at each other, not finding anything to say. The bed,
though only a single, seemed very big. Their imminent nakedness
made them shy of each other. In all the weeks of love-making, they'd
never once been able to undress. Prior was touched by Sarah's shyness,
and a little ashamed of his own.

With an air of unconcern, he started to look round the room. Apart
from the bed, there was a bedside table, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a
washbasin, squeezed into the corner beside the window. A camisole hung
from the back of the chair, and a pair of stays lay on the floor beside it.
Sarah, seeing the direction of his gaze, kicked them under the chair.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I'm not tidy.'

The sound of his voice released them from nervousness. Prior sat on
the bed, and patted it for her to come and sit beside him.

'We'd better not talk much,' she said. 'I told them I'd be late back,
but if they hear voices they'll all be in.'

He couldn't have talked much anyway; his breath caught in his
throat. They stared at each other. He reached up and unpinned her
hair, shaking it out at the sides of her head. Then they lay down side by
side, still gazing at each other. At this distance, her eyes merged into
a single eye, fringed by lashes like prehistoric vegetation, a mysterious,
scarcely human pool. They lay like that for ten or fifteen minutes,
neither of them wanting to hurry, amazed at the time that lay ahead.

After a while Prior rolled over on to his back and looked at the photograph on 
the bedside table, moving the lamp so he could see
better. A wedding group. Cynthia's wedding, he thought, and that
rather fat, pasty-faced soldier, smiling sheepishly at the centre of the
group, must now be dead. People in group photographs look either
idiotic or insane, their faces frozen in anticipation of the flash. Not
Sarah's mother. Even in sepia, her eyes jetted sparks. And that jaw. It
would've been remarkable on a man. 'Your mother looks like my
doctor,' he said. He looked at the photograph again. 'She's not smiling
much, is she?'

'She was smiling at the memorial service.' She looked at the photograph.
'I love her, you know.'

'Of cou . . .' He stopped. Why 'of course'? He didn't love his father.

'I'm glad you're not going back.'

Without warning, Prior saw again the shovel, the sack, the scattered
lime. The eyeball lay in the palm of his hand. 'Yes,' he said.


190
R F G F N F R A The I O N


She would never know, because he would never tell her. Somehow
if she'd known the worst parts, she couldn't have gone on being a
haven for him. He was groping for an idea that he couldn't quite
grasp. Men said they didn't tell their women about France because
they didn't want to worry them. But it was more than that. He needed
her ignorance to hide in. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to know
and be known as deeply as possible. And the two desires were
irreconcilable.

'Do you think your mam'll like me?'

They'd arranged to spend part of his leave together.

'Not as much as she would if you were going back.'

'Tell her about me lungs. That'll cheer her up.' He felt he knew Ada
already.

Sarah rolled over and started to undress him. He pretended to struggle,
but she pushed him back on to the bed, and he lay there, shaking
with laughter, as she got into a tangle over his puttees. At last she gave
up, rested her head on his knees, giggling. 'They're like stays.'

'Don't tell the War Office. You'll have a lot of worried men.'

They stopped laughing and looked at each other.

'I love you,' he said.

'Oh, there's no need to say that.'

'Yes, there is. It's true.'

She took her time thinking about it. At last she said on an indrawn
breath, 'Good. I love you too.'


Owen and Sassoon sat in a corner of the lounge at the Conservative
Club. They had the room to themselves, except for one other member,
and he was half hidden behind the Scotsman. After the waiter had
served the brandies and departed, Sassoon produced a book from his
pocket. 'I'd like to read you something. Do you mind?'

'No, go ahead. Anybody I know?'

'Alymer Strong. Given to me by the author. He brought me a copy
of Lady Margaret's book and -- er -- happened to mention he wrote
himself. Like a fool* I made encouraging noises.'

'Not always disastrous. Why am I being read it?'

'You'll see. There's a sort of dedication. In one of the poems.'


Siegfried, thy fathers warr'd

With many a kestrel, mimicking the dove.


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REGENERATION


Owen looked blank. "What does it mean?'

'What a philistine question. I hope this isn't the future pig-keeper
speaking. I believe it to be a reference to the persecution of the Jews.'

'But you're not a Jew.'

'I am, actually. Or rather my "fathers" were.'

'I didn't know that.' Owen contemplated the fact through a haze of
burgundy. 'That's why you're called Siegfried?'

'No-o, I'm called Siegfried because my mother liked Wagner. And
the only thing I have in common with orthodox Jews is that I do
profoundly thank God I was born a man and not a woman. If I were a
woman, I'd be called Briinnhilde.'

'This is our last evening and I feel as if I've just met you.'

'You know all the important things.'

They looked at each other. Then a rustling of the Scotsman's pages
returned their attention to the book. Sassoon began reading extracts,
and Owen, who was drunk and afraid of becoming too serious, laughed
till he choked. Sassoon had begun by declaiming the verse solemnly,
but when he came to:


Can it be I have become

This gourd, this gothic vaccu-um?

he burst out laughing. 'Oh, I love that. You might like this better.'

What cassock'd misanthrope,

Hawking peace-canticles for glory-gain,

Hymns from his rostrum'd height th' epopt of Hate?


'The what of hate?'

'Epopt.'

'No such word.'

'There is, you know. It's the heroic form of epogee.'

'Can I see?' Owen read the poem. 'This man's against the war.'

'Oh, yes.' Sassoon's lips twitched. 'And particularly devastated
by the role the Christian Church is playing in it. The parallels are
worrying, Owen.'

'I'm worried.' He made to hand the book back. 'It's incredible, isn't
it?'

'No, look inside.'

Owen looked at the flyleaf and read: Owen. From S.S. Edinburgh.


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REGENERATION


Oct. 26th 1917. Underneath Sassoon had written:


When Captain Cook first sniffed the wattle,
And Love columbus'd Aristotle.


'That's absolutely typical,' Owen said.

'It does rather encapsulate his style, doesn't it?'

'You know what I mean. The only slightly demonstrative thing
you've ever done and you do it in a way which makes it impossible to
take seriously.'

'Do you think it's a good idea to be serious tonight?'

'For God's sake, I'm only going to Scarborough. You'll be in France
before I will.'

'I hope so.'

'No news from the War Office?'

'No. And Rivers dropped a bombshell this morning. He's leaving.'

'Is he?'

'I don't look forward to Craiglockhart without either of you. I did
mention you to Rivers, you know.'

'What did he say?'

'That you were an extremely gallant and conscientious young
officer . . .'

'Oooh:

' "Oooh". Who needed no one to teach him his duty. Unlike dot dot
dot. And there were no grounds at all that he could see for keeping
you at the hospital a moment longer. I think he was a bit put out about
being asked to overrule Brock.'

'I'm not surprised. You shouldn't have done it. Look, I could do a
lot with another month. I hate leaving. But the fact is I'd be taking up
a bed some other poor blighter needs far more than I do.'

'As I shall be doing.'

'I didn't mean that.'

'No, but it's true.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'd better be off. Under
the new regime I believe the penalty for staying out late is public
crucifixion.'

In the hall Sassoon produced an envelope from his breast pocket.
'This is a letter of introduction to Robert Ross. It's sealed because
there's something else inside, but that doesn't mean you can't read it.'

Owen tried to think of something to say and failed.

'Take care.'

'And you.'


i93

REGENERATION


I



Sassoon patted him on the shoulder, and was gone. Nothing else,
not even 'goodbye'. Perhaps it was better that way, Owen thought,
going back to the lounge. Better for Siegfried, anyway. Their empty
brandy glasses stood together on the table, in the pool of light cast by
the standard lamp, but the unseen listener had gone. The Scotsman, neatly 
folded, lay on a table by the door.

Owen sat down, got out the letter of introduction, but didn't immediately
open it. The ticking of the clock was very loud in the empty
room. He lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. He was afraid to
measure his sense of loss.

4 TWENTY


Rivers was due to leave Craiglockhart on 14 November, having fulfilled
his promise to Bryce to see the new CO in. He was leaving in
what he considered a totally undeserved blaze of glory. Willard was
walking at last. Rivers could understand the VADs, the orderlies, the
secretaries and the kitchen staff regarding this 'cure' as a great medical
feat, but it was a little dismaying to find that even some of the senior
nursing staff seemed to agree.

Willard himself was exasperating. All Rivers's efforts to inculcate
insight into his condition, to enable him to understand why he'd been
in the wheelchair and how the same outcome might be avoided in
future, were met with a stare of glassy-eyed, quivering respect. Whenever
Rivers came anywhere near him, Willard positively leapt to the
salute. He knew his spinal cord had been broken. He knew Rivers had
reconnected the severed ends. Needless to say the other MOs were
unimpressed. Indeed, after observing Rivers acknowledge one particularly
sizzling salute, Brock was heard to murmur: 'Andfor my next trick
I shall walk on water.'

The last evening round was distressing both for Rivers and the
patients. He left Sassoon till last and then, remembering that he'd spent
the day with Lady Ottoline Morrell and had, presumably, been exposed
to a great dose of pacifist propaganda, went along to his room.

Sassoon was sitting on the floor, hands clasped around his knees,
staring into the fire.


194


REGENERATION


'How was Lady Ottoline?' Rivers said, taking the only chair. 'In full

cry?'

'Not really. The war was hardly mentioned.'

'Oh?'

'No, we talked about Carpenter mainly. Homosexuality. Or rather
I talked. She listened.'

Poor Lady Ottoline. 'The war didn't come up at all?'

'Not today. Last night it did. I think we both knew there was no
point going over that again. Do you know what she asked me? Did I
realize that going back would involve killing Germans?' He brought
his anger under control. 'Pacifists can be amazingly brutal.'

That brief flash of anger was the only emotion Sassoon had shown
since skipping the Board. He seemed at times to be almost unaware of
his surroundings, as if he could get through this interim period between
one Board and the next only by shutting down all awareness of where
he was or what was happening. And yet he was writing, and he
seemed to think he was writing well. All the anger and grief now went
into the poetry. He'd given up hope of influencing events. Or perhaps
he'd just given up hope. At the back of Rivers's mind was the fear that
Craiglockhart had done to Sassoon what the Somme and Arras had
failed to do. And if that were so, he couldn't escape responsibility.

Sassoon roused himself. 'You're off first thing, aren't you?'

'Yes. The six o'clock.'

'So this is goodbye, then.'

'Only for a fortnight. I'll be back for the Board. Meanwhile . . .' He
stood up. 'Keep your head down?'


Rivers stayed overnight with the Heads and then moved into his new
lodgings in Holford Road, a short walk from the RFC hospital. The
floor below was occupied by a family of Belgian refugees whose
demands for better food and apparent indifference to rationing irritated
the landlady, Mrs Irving, beyond measure. She was inclined to stop
Rivers on the stairs and complain about them at considerable length.
The other lodgers were apparently more easily satisfied, and gave no
grounds for complaint.

The nights were disturbed by air raids, though less by German
action than by the guns on the Heath that boomed out with a sound
like bombs falling. Everybody congregated in the basement during
these raids, the Belgian refugees, Mrs Irving, her unmarried daughter
who worked at the hospital, all the other lodgers, and the two young


195



I

HtGLNLKAIlON

i

girls who lived in the attJcs ancj between them did the whole work of
the house. As far as he cqujj ma]je out, they sat around, or under, the table, 
venturing out to the kitchen to make endless cups of cocoa. He
was invited to join these partieS) but always declined, saying that the
air raids didn't bother hir^ much and he needed his sleep.

He managed to sleep tJxrougn some of the raids, but on other nights,
the guns made sleep impossi^le He was not particularly well, but he
didn't want to take more ^ jeave^ and he had no routine leave due to
him. He spent a lot of tl)e tjme wjtn ^ Heads, who turned up one
night and swept him off to the theatre to see the Russian ballet. They
came out, still dazed with swirling light and colour, to find another
raid in progress. In Leiccster Square they stopped and looked up at the ~~1

sky, and there was a pounds ppeiin floating like a strange, silver fish.        
jj

Rumour had it they were piloted by women. It seemed incredible to       ~

Rivers that anybody shouid believe this, but he soon discovered that
most people did. Mrs Irving knew it for \ fact.

As soon as he started a^j, at the hospital he became busy and, as
Head had predicted, fascihated by the differences in severity of breakdown
between the different branches of the RFC. Pilots, though they
did indeed break down, cJid so jess frequently and usually less severely
than the men who manned observation balloons. They, floating helplessly
above the battlefiel^ unable either to avoid attack or to defend
themselves effectively against it> showed the highest incidence of breakdown
of any service. Even including infantry officers. This reinforced
Rivers's view that it was j)rolonged strain, immobility and helplessness
that did the damage, and ^Qt the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that
the patients themselves w^re inclined to point to as the explanation for
their condition. That womj nelp to account for the greater prevalence
of anxiety neuroses and Hysterical disorders in women in peacetime,
since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities
of reacting to stress in active ancj constructive ways. Any explanation
of war neurosis must account for the pounds act that this apparently intensely
masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the
same disorders that women suffered from in peace.

So he had plenty to tr^ink about, and before long it was clear he
would have plenty to do. Many of nis old Craiglockhart patients who
were living in London or the south of England had already written to
ask if they could come to. see nim. That, by itself, would supply him
with a great deal of work.

He was due back at Crajgiod^hart on the 25th of November. On the


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24th he'd accepted an invitation to visit Queen Square. The invitation
had been issued several times before and he'd always found a reason
for refusing, but now that he was one of the small number of physicians
in London dealing with the psycho-neuroses of war, he judged
it rather more expedient than pleasant that he should accept. And
so, at half past nine on the 24th November, he walked up the steps
of the National Hospital. His night had been even more disturbed
by the guns than usual, and he was feeling distinctly unwell. If he'd
been able to cancel or postpone this visit without giving offence, he
would certainly have done so. He gave his name to the receptionist. Dr
Yealland was expecting him, she said. Go up.

He took the lift to the third floor. He pushed through the swing
doors on to a long, empty, shining corridor, which, as he began to
walk down it, seemed to elongate. He began to be afraid he was really
ill. This deserted corridor in a hospital he knew to be overcrowded had
something eerie about it. Uncanny. Almost the feeling his patients
described, talking about their experience of the front, of No Man's
Land, that landscape apparently devoid of life that actually contained
millions of men.

The swing doors at the far end of the corridor flapped open. At first
Rivers was pleased, expecting to be received by some bustling nurse or
VAD, but instead a creature - it hardly resembled a man - crawled
through the door and began moving towards him. The figure made
remarkably rapid progress for somebody so bent, so apparently deformed.
His head was twisted to one side, and drawn back, the spine
bent so that the chest was parallel with the legs, which themselves were
bent at the knees. In addition one arm, the left, was pulled away from
the body and contracted. The right hand clung to the rail, not sliding
along it, but brought forward step by step, making repeated slapping
sounds on the wood.

As they converged, the man turned his head, insofar as he was able
to turn it, and stared up at Rivers. Probably this was dictated by no
more than the curiosity patients always feel at the appearance of a
doctor on wards where nothing else ever happens, but it seemed to
Rivers that his expression was both sombre and malevolent. He had to
drag his own gaze away. At that moment a VAD came out of a side
ward and said in that bracingly jolly way of theirs, 'Nearly ten o'clock.
Let's have you in bed.'

The morning round. Rivers wondered if he was in for that.

He was. Yealland came out of his room, flanked by two junior


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REGENERATION

«

doctors, shook hands briskly and said that he thought the best general
introduction was perhaps simply a ward round.

The party consisted of Yealland, the two junior doctors who were
being put through their paces, a ward sister, who made no contribution
and was invited to make none, and a couple of orderlies who hovered
in the background in case they were required to lift. Yealland was an
impressive figure. In conversation he did not merely meet your eye,
but stared so intently that you felt your skull had become transparent.
His speech was extremely precise. Something in this steady, unrelenting
projection of authority made Rivers want to laugh, but he didn't
think he'd have wanted to laugh if he'd been a junior doctor or a
patient.

They did the post-treatment ward first. The bulk of the conversation
was between Yealland and the two junior doctors, with occasional
asides to Rivers. Contact with patients was restricted to a brisk,
cheerful, authoritative greeting. No questions were asked about their
psychological state. Many of them, Rivers thought, showed signs
of depression, but in every case the removal of the physical
symptom was described as a cure. Most of these patients would be out
within a week, Yealland said. Rivers asked questions about the relapse
rate, the suicide rate, and received the expected reply. Nobody knew.

The admissions ward was next. An immensely long ward, lined
with white-covered beds packed close together. On both sides windows
reached from floor to ceiling, and the room was flooded with cold
northern light. The patients, many displaying bizarre contractures of
their limbs, sat, if they were capable of sitting, upright in their beds, as
near to attention as they could get. Rivers's corridor acquaintance was
just inside the room, lying face down on his bed, buttocks in the air,
presumably the only position he was capable of maintaining. It couldn't
be said he added to the desired impression of tidiness, but the nurses
had done their best. The little procession came to a halt by his bed.

Yealland's previous performance had been perfunctory. Rivers suspected
he lost interest in the patients once the miracle had been worked.
Now, though, he turned to Rivers with real zest. 'This one's fairly
typical,' he said, and nodded to the ginger-haired doctor.

A shell had exploded close to the patient, who had been buried up to
the neck and had remained in that position for some time under continued
heavy fire. For two or three days after being dug out he'd been
dazed, though he did have a vague recollection of the explosion. Six
weeks later he'd been sent to England, to a hospital in Eastbourne


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where he'd been treated with physical exercises. During this time the
abnormal flexure of the spine had grown worse.

The sheets were pulled back. It was not possible to bend the trunk
passively, the doctor said, demonstrating. The patient couldn't eat
from a table and, as they could all see, he couldn't lie straight in
bed. He complained of considerable pain in the head, which was
worse at night. And when he woke up there were coloured lights
dancing in front of his eyes. Some right hemianalgesia was present.
There was tenderness -- probing -- from the sixth dorsal spine down
to the lumbar region. Free, but not excessive, perspiration of the feet.
A mark made on the sole of the foot lasted an abnormally long
time.

'And?' Ycalland said.

The young man looked frightened, a fear Rivers remembered only
too clearly. The missing fact came to him just in time. 'No sign of
organic disease,' he finished triumphantly.

'Good. So at least we may be encouraged to believe the patient is in
the right hospital?'

'Yes, sir.'

Yealland walked to the head of the bed. 'You will receive treatment
this afternoon,' he said. 'I shall begin by making your back straight.
This will be done by the application of electricity to your spine and
back. You have power to raise your head, indeed you can even extend
it. I am sure you understand the pain is due to the position you assume.
The muscles are in too great a stretch and there is no relief, because
even when you rest the same position is maintained. The electricity
may be strong, but it will be the means of restoring your lost powers the
power to straighten your back.'

It was extraordinary. If Yealland had appeared authoritative before,
it was nothing compared with the almost God-like tone he now
assumed. The patient was looking distinctly alarmed. 'Will it hurt?'
he asked.

Yealland said: 'I realize you did not intend to ask that question and
so I will overlook it. I am sure you understand the principles of the
treatment, which are . . .' He paused, as if expecting the patient to
supply them. 'Attention, first and foremost; tongue, last and least;
questions, never. I shall see you this afternoon.'

And so on round the ward. Yealland stopped in some triumph by
the last bed. 'Now this is interesting.'

Rivers had been aware of this patient ever since they entered the


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ward. He sat up very straight in bed, and followed their progress with
an air of brooding antagonism.

'Callan,' Yealland said. 'Mons, the Marne, Aisne, first and second
Ypres, Hill 60, Neuve-Chapelle, Loos, Armentieres, the Somme and
Arras.' He looked at Callan. 'Have I missed any?'

Callan obviously heard the question, but made no response. His
eyes flicked from Yealland to Rivers, whom he looked up and down
dispassionately. Yealland leant closer to Rivers and murmured, 'Very
negative attitude.' He nodded to the junior doctor to begin.

Callan had broken down in April. He'd been employed behind the
lines on transport at the time, perhaps because his nervous state was
already giving cause for concern. While feeding the horses, he had
suddenly fallen down, and had remained unconscious for a period of
five hours. When he came round, he was shaking all over and was
unable to speak. He hadn't spoken at all since then. He attributed his
loss of speech to heatstroke.

'Methods of treatment?' Yealland asked.

The patient had been strapped to a chair for periods of twenty
minutes at a time, and very strong electric current applied to his neck
and throat. Hot plates had been applied repeatedly to the back of the
throat, and lighted cigarettes to the tongue.

'I'm sorry?' Rivers said. 'What was that?'

'Lighted cigarettes to the tongue. Sir.'

'None of it persevered with,' Yealland said. 'It's the worst possible
basis for treatment because the electricity's been tried and he knows -- or 
thinks he knows -- that it doesn't work.' He walked to the head of
the bed. 'Do you wish to be cured? Nod if you do.'

Callan smiled.

'You appear to me to be very indifferent to your condition, but
indifference will not do in such times as these. I have seen many
patients suffering from similar conditions, and not a few in whom the
disorder has existed for a much longer time. It has been my experience
with these cases to find two kinds of patients, those who want to
recover and those who do not want to recover. I understand your condition 
thoroughly and it makes no difference to me which group
you belong to. You must recover your speech at once.'

As they were leaving the ward, Yealland drew him aside. 'Do you
have time to witness a treatment?'

'Yes. I'd very much like to.' Apart from anything else he was curious
to know how strong 'strong' was when describing an electric current.

REGENERATION


It was a matter on which published papers were apt to be reticent.
'Would it be possible for me to see the man we've just left?'

'Yes. Though it won't be quick. And I can't interrupt the
treatment.'

'That's all right. I've no afternoon appointments. I'd like to see him because 
of the the previous failed treatments.'

'Oh, quite right. He's the interesting one. The others are just
routine.'

They were walking down to the MOs' dining room for lunch.

'You do only one session?' Rivers asked.

'Yes. The patient has to know when he enters the electrical room
that there's no way out except by a full recovery.' Yealland hesitated.
'I normally do treatments alone.'

'I'll be as unobtrusive as I can.'

Yealland nodded. 'Good. The last thing these patients need is a
sympathetic audience.'


TWENTY-ONE


After lunch they went straight to the electrical room. Rivers sat on a
hard chair in the corner, prepared to stay as long as necessary. The only
other furniture was a small desk under the tall window, with a stack of
buff-coloured files on it, the battery and the patient's chair, rather like
a dentist's chair, except for the straps on the arms and around the foot
rest. Yealland, who'd been emptying his bladder in preparation for a
long session, came in, rubbing his hands. He nodded cheerfully to
Rivers, but didn't speak. Then, rather to Rivers's surprise, he began
pulling down the blinds. The blinds were the thick, efficient blinds of
wartime, and after he'd finished not a chink of light from the dank,
November day could get into the room. Rivers now expected him to
turn on the overhead lights, but he didn't. Instead, he left the room in
darkness, except for a small circle of light round the battery. This light
was reflected off his white coat and up on to his face.

Callan was brought in. He looked indifferent, or defiant, though
once he was settled in the chair his eyes shifted from side to side in a
way that suggested fear.


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RFOFNFRATTON


'I am going to lock the door,' Yealland said. He returned to stand
before the patient, ostentatiously dropping the key into his top pocket.
'You must talk before you leave me.'

All very well, Rivers thought. But Yealland had locked himself in
as well as the patient. There could be no backing down.

Yealland put the pad electrode on the lumbar spines and began
attaching the long pharyngeal electrode. 'You will not leave me,' he
said, 'until you are talking as well as you ever did. No, not a minute
before.'

The straps on the chair were left unfastened. Yealland inserted a
tongue depressor. Callan neither co-operated nor struggled, but simply
sat with his mouth wide open and his head thrown back. Then the
electrode was applied to the back of his throat. He was thrown back
with such force that the leads were ripped out of the battery. Yealland
removed the electrode. 'Remember you must behave as becomes the
hero I expect you to be,' Yealland said. 'A man who has been through
so many battles should have a better control of himself.' He fastened
the straps round Callan's wrists and feet. 'Remember you must talk
before you leave me.'

Callan was white and shaking, but it was impossible to tell how
much pain he was in, since obviously he could no more scream than he
could speak. Yealland applied the electrode again, continuously, but
evidently with a weaker current since Callan was not thrown back.
'Nod to me when you are ready to attempt to speak.'

It took an hour. Rivers during all that time scarcely moved. His
empathy with the man in the chair kept him still, since Callan himself
never moved, except once to flex the fingers of his strapped hands. At
last he nodded. Immediately the electrode was removed, and after a
great deal of effort Callan managed to say 'ah' in a sort of breathy
whisper.

Yealland said, 'Do you realize that there is already an improvement?
Do you appreciate that a result has already been achieved? Small as it
may seem to you, if you will consider rationally for yourself, you will
believe me when I tell you that you will be talking before long.'

The electrode was applied again. Yealland started going through the
sounds of the alphabet: ah, bah, cah, dah, etc., encouraging Callan to
repeat the sounds after him, though only 'ah' was repeated. Whenever
Callan said 'ah' on request, the electrode was momentarily removed.
Whenever he substituted 'ah' for other sounds, the current was
reapplied.


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REGENERATION


They had now been in the room an hour and a half. Callaii was
obviously exhausted. Despite the almost continuous application of the
electric current he was actually beginning to drop off to sleep. Yealland
evidently sensed he was losing his patient's attention and unstrapped
him. 'Walk up and down,' he said.

Callan did as he was bid, and Yealland walked beside him, encouraging
him to repeat the sounds of the alphabet, though, again, only
'ah' was produced and that in a hoarse whisper, very far back in the
throat. Callan stumbled as he walked, and Yealland supported him.
Up and down they went, up and down, in and out of the circle of
light around the battery.

Rebellion came at last. Callan wrenched his arm out of Yealland's
grasp and ran to the door. Evidently he'd forgotten it was locked,
though he remembered at once and turned on Yealland.

Yealland said, 'Such an idea as leaving me now is most ridiculous.
You cannot leave the room. The door is locked and the key is in my
pocket. You will leave me when you are cured, remember, not before.
I have no doubt you are tired and discouraged, but that is not my fault;
the reason is that you do not understand your condition as I do, and
the time you have already spent with me is not long in comparison
with the time I am prepared to stay with you. Do you understand me?'

Callan looked at Yealland. For a second the thought of striking him
was clearly visible, but then Callan seemed to admit defeat. He pointed
to the battery and then to his mouth, miming: Get on with it.

'No,' Yealland said. 'The time for more electrical treatment has not
yet come; if it had, I should give it to you. Suggestions are not wanted
from you; they are not needed. When the time comes for more electricity,
you will be given it whether you want it or not.' He paused. Then
added with great emphasis: 'You must speak, but I shall not listen to
anything you have to say.'

They walked up and down again, Callan still repeating 'ah', but
making no other sound. The 'ah' was produced by an almost superhuman
effort, the muscles of the neck in spasm, the head raised in
a series of jerks. Even the torso and the arms were involved in the
immense effort of pushing this sound across his lips. Rivers had to
stop himself trying to make the sound for him. He was himself very
tense; all the worst memories of his stammer came crowding into his
mind.

Yealland said, 'You are now ready for the next stage of treatment,
which consists of the administration of strong shocks to the outside of


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REGENERATION


the neck. These will be transmitted to your voice box and you will
soon be able to say anything you like in a whisper.'

Callan was again placed in the chair and again strapped in. The key
electrode was applied in short bursts to his neck in the region of the
larynx, Yealland repeating 'ah, bah, cah, dah', etc. in time with the
shocks. On the third repetition of the alphabet, Callan suddenly said
'ba'. Instead of attempting the next sound, he went on repeating 'ba',
not loudly, but venomously. 'Bah, bah', and then, unmistakably 'Baaaa!
Baaaaa! Baaaaaa!'

Yealland actually looked gratified. He said, 'Are you not glad you
have made such progress?'

Callan started to cry. For a while there was no other sound in the
room than his sobbing. Then he wiped his eyes on the back of his hand
and mimed a request for water.

'Yes, you will have water soon. Just as soon as you can utter a
word.'

Callan pushed Yealland aside and ran to the door, rattling the handle,
beating on the wood with his clenched fists. Rivers couldn't bear to go
on watching. He looked down at the backs of his clasped hands.

Yealland said, 'You will leave this room when you are speaking
normally. I know you do not want the treatment suspended now you
are making such progress. You are a noble fellow and these ideas
which come into your mind and make you want to leave me do not
represent your true self. I know you are anxious to be cured and are
happy to have recovered to such an extent; now you are tired and
cannot think properly, but you must make every effort to think in the
manner characteristic of your true self: a hero ofMons.'

Perhaps Callan remembered, as Yealland apparently did not, that
Mons had been a defeat. At any rate he went back to the chair.

'You must utter a sound,' Yealland said. 'I do not care what the
nature of the sound is. You will understand me when I say I shall be
able to train any sound into the production of vowel sounds, then into letter 
sounds, and finally into words and sentences. Utter a sound when
you take a deep breath, and as soon as I touch your throat.'

Callan, although he appeared to be co-operating, could make no
expiratory sound.

Yealland appeared to lose patience. He clamped his hands down on
to Callan's wrists and said, 'This has gone on long enough. I may have
to use a stronger current. I do not want to hurt you, but if necessary I
must.'


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R F: G E N F RATION


Havers couldn't tell whether the anger was acted or real, but there
was no doubt about the strength of the current being applied to the
neck in shock after shock. But it worked. Soon Callan was repeating
'ah' at a normal pitch, then other sounds, then words. At this point
Yealland stopped the use of electricity, and Callan sagged forward in
the chair. He looked as if he were going to fall, but the straps held him
in place. 'Go on repeating the days,' Yealland said.

'S-s-s-sunday. M-m-m-m-m-monday. T-t-t-t-tuesday . . .'

Saturday came at last.

Yealland said, 'Remember there is no way out, except by the return
of your proper voice and by that door. I have one key, you have the
other. When you can talk properly, I shall open the door and you can
go back to the ward.'

And so it went on, through the alphabet, the days of the week, the
months of the year -- the shocks sometimes mild, sometimes extremely
strong -- until he was speaking normally. As soon as he could say
words clearly at a normal pitch, he developed a spasm or tremor -- not
unlike paralysis agitans -- in his left arm. Yealland applied a roller
electrode to the arm. The tremor then reappeared in the right arm,
then the left leg, and finally the right leg, each appearance being
treated with the application of the electrode. Finally the cure was
pronounced complete. Callan was permitted to stand up. 'Are you not
pleased to be cured?' Yealland asked.

Callan smiled.

'I do not like your smile,' Yealland said. 'I find it most objectionable.
Sit down.'

Callan sat.

'This will not take a moment,' Yealland said. 'Smile.'

Callan smiled and the key electrode was applied to the side of his
mouth. When he was finally permitted to stand up again, he no longer
smiled.

'Are you not pleased to be cured?' Yealland repeated.

'Yes, sir.'

'Nothing else?'

A fractional hesitation. Then Callan realized what was required and
came smartly to the salute. 'Thank you, sir.'


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R E G F N F. R A The I O N


TWENTY-TWO


That evening after dinner Rivers tried to work on a paper he was due
to give to the Royal Society of Medicine in December. As he read
through what he'd written, he became aware that he was being haunted
by images. The man in the corridor at Queen Square, Yealland's
hands, Callan's open mouth, the two figures, doctor and patient, walking
up and down, in and out of the circle of light round the battery. It
was unusual for Rivers to visualize as intensely as this, indeed to
visualize at all, but then the whole experience, from beginning to end,
had had something . . . hallucinatory about it.

Rivers left the typewriter and went to sit in his armchair by the fire.
As soon as he abandoned the attempt to concentrate on the paper, he
knew he was ill. He was sweating, his heart pounded, pulses all over his
body throbbed, and he felt again that extraordinary sensation of blood
squeezing through his veins. He thought he might have a slight temperature,
but he never, as a matter of principle, took his own temperature
or measured his pulse. There were depths of neuroticism to which he
was not prepared to sink.

His confrontation with Yealland had exhausted him, for, however
polite they had each been to each other, it had been a confrontation. He
was too tired to go on working, but he knew if he went to bed in this
state he wouldn't sleep, even if there was no disturbance from the
guns. He decided to take a turn on the Heath, fetched his greatcoat
from the peg and crept downstairs. Mrs Irving was a pleasant enough
woman, but she was also a very lonely woman, and inclined to air her
grievances about the excessive demands of Belgian refugees. He reached
the bottom of the stairs, listened a moment, then quietly let himself out
of the house.

He felt his way along the dark street. Shuttered windows, like blind
eyes, watched from either side. It was something new this darkness,
like the deep darkness of the countryside. Even on the Heath, where
normally London was spread out before you in a blaze of light, there
was only darkness, and again darkness. Starlight lay on the pond,
waking a dull gleam, like metal. Nothing else. He started to walk
round the edge, trying to empty his mind of Queen Square, but the
images floated before him like specks in the eye. Again and again he
saw Callan's face, heard his voice repeating simple words, a grotesque


206


R E C E N E R A The I O N


parody of Adam naming created things. He felt pursued. There
they were, the two of them, Yealland and his patient, walking up and
down inside his head. Uninvited. If this was what habitual visualizers
experienced, he could only say he found it most unpleasant.

He stopped and looked at the pond. He was aware of rustling,
dragging footsteps. Somebody bumped into him and muttered something,
but he moved away. By the time he got back to his lodgings he
felt much better, well enough to greet Mrs Irving in the hall and
compliment her on a more than adequate dinner.

Back in his own rooms he went straight to bed. The sheets felt cold,
so cold he again wondered if he was running a temperature, but at least
the palpitations and the breathlessness had gone. He thought he might
manage to sleep if the Zeppelins and the guns allowed it, and indeed he
did fall asleep almost as soon as he turned off the light.

He was walking down the corridor at Queen Square, an immensely
long corridor which elongated as he walked along it, like a strip of
elastic at full stretch. The swing doors at the far end opened and shut,
flap-flapping an unnaturally long time, like the wings of an ominous
bird. Clinging to the rail, the deformed man watched him approach.
The eyes swivelled to follow him. The mouth opened and out of it
came the words: / am making this protest on behalf of my fellow-soldiers
because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the
power to end it.

The words echoed along the white corridor. Abruptly the dream
changed. He was in the electrical room, a pharyngeal electrode in his
hand, a man's open mouth in front of him. He saw the moist, pink
interior, the delicately quivering uvula, the yellowish, grainy surface
of the tongue, and the tonsils, like great swollen, blue-purple eggs. He
slipped the tongue depressor in, and tried to apply the electrode, but
the electrode, for some reason, wouldn't fit. He tried to force it. The
man struggled and bucked beneath him, and, looking down, he saw
that the object he was holding was a horse's bit. He'd already done a
lot of damage. The corners of the man's mouth were raw, flecked with
blood and foam, but still he went on, trying to force the bit into the
mouth, until a cry from the patient woke him. He sat up, heart pounding,
and realized he had himself cried out. For a second the dream was
so real that he went on seeing the chair, the battery, the tortured
mouth. Then, nothing. Gradually, his heart beat returned to normal,
though when he got out of bed and went across to sit by the window
the small effort made it pound again.


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No raid tonight. It was ironic that on this one quiet night he should
have woken himself up with a nightmare. As with all nightmares, the
horror lingered. He was still inclined to accuse himself. That, he
thought -- self-reproach -- had been the dominant affect. At first he was
inclined to connect it with the quasi-sexual imagery of the dream, for
the dream action had been both an accurate representation of Yealland's
treatment and uncomfortably like an oral rape. He didn't feel, however,
that the underlying conflict had been sexual.

The manifest content came from his visit to Queen Square, and was
present with relatively little transformation. There was no doubt that
the visit had been rife with opportunities for conflict. From the beginning
he'd felt a tension between, on the one hand, his sympathy for the
patients, his doubts about the quality of the treatment they were receiving,
and on the other, the social and professional demands on him to be
reasonably polite. As the day had gone on, this conflict had certainly
deepened. Over lunch Yealland had told him about an officer patient
of his who stammered badly, and whom Yealland had cured in - as
usual -- one session. Rivers -- to his own amusement and exasperation -- had 
responded to the story by beginning to stammer rather badly. And
whenever he'd hesitated over a word, he'd sensed Yealland calculating
the voltage. All nonsense of course. He'd been more amused by the
situation than anything else, but nevertheless the worsening of his
stammer did point to an underlying conflict that might well find
expression in a dream.

The man in the corridor with the spinal contracture seemed to
represent Sassoon, since he'd quoted the Declaration, though it was
difficult to imagine anybody more physically unlike Sassoon than that
deformed, pseudo-dwarf. And the expression of antagonism -- that
certainly didn't correspond with anything in the real Sassoon's attitude
towards him. But then there was no reason why it should. The dream
action is the creation of the dreamer. The mood of this dream, a mood
so powerful he could still not shake it off, was one of the most painful
self-accusation. The man's expression need reflect no more than his feeling 
that Sassoon, perhaps, had grounds for antagonism.

He hadn't been able to see the face of the second patient, and had
no clear sense of who it was. The obvious candidate was Callan, since
it was Callan he'd watched being treated. And Callan had been working
with horses when he became mute, which might account for the
bit. And yet he was fairly certain the dream patient had not been
Callan.


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On the wards he'd been struck by a slight facial resemblance between
Callan and Prior, who had also been mute when he arrived at Craiglock
hart. He remembered an incident shortly after Prior's arrival when
he'd dragged a teaspoon across the back of his throat, hoping that the
choking reflex would trigger the return of speech. This did sometimes
happen. He'd seen more than one patient recover his voice in that way. But he'd 
tried it while in a state of acute irritation with Prior, and the
choking had occasioned a momentary spasm of satisfaction. Very slight,
but enough to make him feel, in retrospect, discontented with his own
behaviour. Mute patients did arouse exasperation, particularly, as with
both Prior and Callan, when their satisfaction with their condition was
hardly at all disguised. Perhaps the dream patient was a composite
figure, part Callan, part Prior, the combination suggested by his application
of a teaspoon to Prior's throat and Yealland's application of an
electrode to Callan's.

But there was no comparison in the amount of pain inflicted. On
the face of it he seemed to be congratulating himself on dealing with
patients more humanely than Yealland, but then why the mood of
self-accusation? In the dream he stood in Yealland's place. The dream
seemed to be saying, in dream language, don't flatter yourself. There is no 
distinction.

A horse's bit. Not an electrode, not a teaspoon. A bit. An instrument
of control. Obviously he and Yealland were both in the business of
controlling people. Each of them fitted young men back into the role
of warrior, a role they had -- however unconsciously -- rejected. He'd
found himself wondering once or twice recently what possible meaning
the restoration of mental health could have in relation to his work.
Normally a cure implies that the patient will no longer engage in
behaviour that is clearly self-destructive. But in present circumstances,
recovery meant the resumption of activities that were not merely self
destructive but positively suicidal. But then in a war nobody is a free
agent. He and Yealland were both locked in, every bit as much as their
patients were.

Bits. The scold's bridle used to silence recalcitrant women in the
Middle Ages. More recently, on American slaves. And yet on the
ward, listening to the list of Callan's battles, he'd felt that nothing
Callan could say could have been more powerful than his silence.
Later, in the electrical room, as Callan began.slowly to repeat the
alphabet, walking up and down with Yealland, in and out of the circle
°f light, Rivers had felt that he was witnessing the silencing of a human


209



REGENERATION


being. Indeed, Yealland had come very close to saying just that. 'You
must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say.'

Silencing, then. The task of silencing somebody, with himself in
Yealland's place and an unidentified patient in the chair. It was possible
to escape still, to pretend the dream accusation was general. Just as
Yealland silenced the unconscious protest of his patients by removing
the paralysis, the deafness, the blindness, the muteness that stood between
them and the war, so, in an infinitely more gentle way, he silenced his 
patients; for the stammerings, the nightmares, the tremors,
the memory lapses, of officers were just as much unwitting protest as
the grosser maladies of the men.

But he didn't believe in the general accusation. He didn't believe this
was what the dream was saying. Dreams were detailed, concrete, specific:
the voice of the protopathic heard at last, as one by one the higher
centres of the brain closed down. And he knew who the patient in the
chair was. Not Callan, not Prior. Only one man was being silenced in
the way the dream indicated. He told himself that the accusation was
unjust. It was Sassoon's decision to abandon the protest, not his. But
that didn't work. He knew the extent of his own influence.

He went on sitting by the window as dawn grew over the Heath,
and felt that he was having to appeal against conviction in a courtroom
where he himself had been both judge and jury.

I



TWENTY-THREE


Head's room was very quiet. The tall windows that overlooked the
square were shrouded in white net. Outside was a day of moving
clouds and fitful sunlight, and whenever the sun shone, the naked
branches of plane trees patterned the floor. So Head's patients must sit,
hour after hour, with those bright, rather prominent eyes fixed on
them, while elsewhere in the house doors banged and a telephone
started to ring. But there the normality of the 'consultation' ended, for
Head would never, not even under the most extreme provocation,
have told a patient that.he was talking a load of self-indulgent rubbish.
Rivers opened his mouth to protest and was waved into silence.

'All right,' Head swept on. 'He's muddle-headed, immature, liable


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REGEN ERAT1ON


to fits of enthusiasm, inconsistent. All of that. But . . . And he virtually
had no father and he's put you in his father's place. But, he's also' -- 
ticking off on his fingers - 'brave, capable of resisting any amount of
pressure -- the mere fact he protested at all in the present climate tells us
that -- and above all -- no, let me finish -- he has integrity. Everything
you've told me about him suggests he was always going to go back, as
soon as he knew the protest was useless, simply because there's no way
he can honourably stay in Craiglockhart taking up a bed he doesn't
need.'

Rivers smiled. 'What are friends for if not letting you off the hook?'

'Well, let me get you off the other hook while I'm about it. You
and Yealland doing essentially the same thing. Good God, man, if you
really believe that it's the first sign of dementia. I can't imagine anybody
less like Yealland -- methods, attitudes, values -- everything. The whole
attitude to the patient. And in spite of all this self-laceration, I can't help
thinking you know that. Who would you rather be sent to if you were
the patient?'

'You.'

Head smiled. 'No. I don't say I do a bad job, but I'm not as good
with these particular patients as you are.'

'I suppose I'm worried about him.'

'Yes. Well. . .'

'I think what bothers me more than anything else is this total inability
to think about after the war. You see, I think he's made up his mind to
get killed.'

'All the more reason for you to get it clear whose decision it was
that he went back.' A pause. 'You know after dinner the other night
Ruth was saying how much she thought you'd changed.'

Rivers was looking out of the window.

'Do you think you have?'

'I'm probably the last person to know. I can't imagine going back to
the same way of life. But. . .' He raised his hands. 'I've been there
before. And . . .' A little, self-deprecating laugh. 'Nothing happened.'

'When was this?'

'After my second trip to the Solomons.'

Head waited.

'I don't know whether you've ever had the . . . the experience of
having your life changed by a quite trivial incident. You know, nothing
dramatic like the death of a parent, or the birth of a child. Something so 
trivial you almost can't see why it had the effect it had. It happened


211



R E C E N K R A The I O N


to me on that trip. I was on the Southern Cross -- that's the mission boat

-       and there was a group of islanders there - recent converts. You can
always tell if they're recent, because the women still have bare breasts.
And I thought I'd go through my usual routine, so I started asking
questions. The first question was, what would you do with it if you
earned or found a guinea? Would you share it, and if so who would
you share it with? It gets their attention because to them it's a lot of
money, and you can uncover all kinds of things about kinship structure
and economic arrangements, and so on. Anyway at the end of this

-       we were all sitting cross-legged on the deck, miles from anywhere they
decided they'd turn the tables on me, and ask me the same questions.
Starting with: What would 7 do with a guinea? Who would I
share it with? I explained I was unmarried and that I wouldn't necessarily
feel obliged to share it with anybody. They were incredulous. How
could anybody live like that'? And so it went on, question after question.
And it was one of those situations, you know, where one person starts
laughing and everybody joins in and in the end the laughter just feeds
off itself. They were rolling round the deck by the time I'd finished.
And suddenly I realized that anything I told them would have got the
same response. I could've talked about sex, repression, guilt, fear - the
whole sorry caboodle -- and it would've got exactly the same response.
They wouldn't've felt a twinge of disgust or disapproval or ... sympathy
or anything, because it would all have been too bizarre. And
I suddenly saw that their reactions to my society were neither more
nor less valid than mine to theirs. And do you know that was a moment
of the most amazing freedom. I lay back and I closed my eyes and I felt
as if a ton weight had been lifted.'

'Sexual freedom?'

'That too. But it was it was more than that. It was . . . the Great
White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously 
assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we
approached them. And suddenly I saw not only that we weren't the
measure of all things, but that there was no measure.'

'And yet you say nothing changed?'

'Nothing changed in England. And I don't know why. I think partly
just the sheer force of other people's expectations. You know you're
walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it
off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.'

'And now?'

'I don't know. I think perhaps the patients've . . . have done for me

I



212


REGENERATION


what I couldn't do for myself.' He smiled. 'You sec healing does go on,
even if not in the expected direction.'


Rivers's return to Craiglockhart on this occasion was quieter than any
previous return had been. There were no boisterous young men playing
football with a visitor's hat; indeed, the whole building seemed quieter,
though Brock, whom Rivers sat next to at dinner, said that the change
in regime had not been as striking as had been intended. The wearing
of Sam Browne belts was strictly enjoined and offenders relentlessly
pursued, but, aside from that, the attempt to run a psychiatric hospital
on parade ground lines had been briefly and vociferously tried, then
rapidly and quietly abandoned.

After dinner Rivers set out to see the patients who were due to be
Boarded the following day. Anderson had at last received a visit from
his wife, though it didn't seem to have cheered him up much. The
conflict between himself and his family, as to whether he should return
to medicine or not, was deepening as the time came for him to leave
Craiglockhart. The nightmares were still very bad, but in any case the
haemophobia alone prevented any hospital service whether in Britain
or France. Rivers hoped that he would be given a desk job in London,
which would also enable Rivers to go on seeing him. At the same time
he was a little doubtful even about that. Anderson had moved from
a position of being sceptical and even uncooperative to a state of
deep attachment, in which there was a danger of dependency. He left
Anderson's room shaking his head.

Sassoon was sitting by the fire in almost the same position he'd been
in when Rivers left.

'What have you been doing with yourself?' Rivers asked.

'Trying to keep my head down.'

'Successfully?'

'I think so.'

'Have you managed to write?'

'Finished the book. It's called CounterAttack.'

'Very appropriate.'

'You shall have the first copy.'

Rivers looked round the room, which seemed cold and bleak in
spite of the small fire. 'Do you hear from Owen at all?'

'Constantly. He ... er ... writes distinctly effusive letters. You
know . . .' He hesitated. 'I knew about the hero-worship, but I'm
beginning to think it was rather more than that.'


213


REGENERATION

I

*

Rivers watched the firelight flicker on Sassoon's hair and face. He     ^

said, 'It happens.'

'I just hope I was kind enough.'

'I'm sure you were.'

'I don't suppose you've heard from the War Office?'

'On the contrary. I had dinner with Hope the other night, and I
have an informal assurance that no obstacles will be put in your way.
It's not a guarantee, but it's the best I can do.'

Sassoon took a deep breath. 'All right. Back to the sausage machine.'

'It doesn't mean you don't have to be careful with the Board.'

Sassoon smiled. 'I shall say as little as possible.'


The Board was chaired by the new CO, Colonel Balfour Graham.
The previous evening Rivers and Brock had discussed the likely effects
of this on the conduct of the Board, but had not been able to reach any
firm conclusion. Balfour Graham hadn't had time to get to know most
of the patients. Either he'd be content simply to move things along as
smoothly as possible or, at worst, he might feel obliged to assert his
authority by asking both patient and MO more questions than was
usual. The third member of the Board was Major Huntley, still -- if his
conversation over breakfast was anything to go by -- obsessed by rose
growing and racial degeneracy.

Anderson came first. Balfour Graham expressed some surprise that
Rivers was not recommending a general discharge.

'He still wants to serve his country,' Rivers said. 'And there's absolutely
no reason why he shouldn't be able to do so. In an administrative
capacity. I rather think he may be given a desk job in the War Office.'

'Are we doing the War Office or the patient a favour?' Balfour
Graham asked.

'He's an able man. It might be quite good for them to have somebody
with extensive experience of France.'

'Lord, yes,' said Huntley.

'It merely occurred to me that it might be convenient for Anderson
to be able to postpone the moment when he has to face the prospect of
civilian medicine.'

'That too,' said Rivers.

The actual interview with Anderson was reasonably quick. Indeed,
the whole morning went quickly. They stopped for lunch -- over
which Rivers professed great interest in mildew and blackspot -- and
then sat down rather wearily but on time for the next ten. Rivers


214


REGENERATION


hardly knew at this stage whether he felt reassured or not. Balfour
Graham was quick, courteous, efficient -- and shrewd. Huntley's interventions,
though rare, were rather unpredictable, and seemed to depend
entirely on whether he liked the patient. He took to Willard at once,
and was scandalized when Rivers made some comment deploring
Willard's lack of insight. 'What's he want insight for? He's supposed to
be killing the buggers, Rivers, not psychoanalysing them.'

Sassoon was last but one. 'A slightly unusual case,' Rivers began,
dismissively. 'In the sense that I'm recommending him for general
service overseas.'

'More than slightly unusual, surely?' Balfour Graham asked with a
faint smile. 'I don't think it's ever been done before. Has it?'

'I couldn't make any other recommendation. He's completely fit,
mentally and physically, he wants to go back to France, and ... I have
been given an assurance by the War Office that no obstacles will be
placed in his way.'

'Why should they be?' asked Huntley.

Balfour Graham said, 'This is the young man who believes the war
is being fought for the wrong reasons, and that we should explore
Germany's offer of a negotiated peace. Do you think --'

'Those were his views,' Rivers said, 'while he was still suffering from
exhaustion and the after-effects of a shoulder wound. Fortunately a
brother officer intervened and he was sent here. Really no more was
required than a brief period of rest and reflection. He now feels very
strongly that it's his duty to go back.'

'He was dealt with very leniently, it seems to me,' Huntley said.

'He has a good record. ME. Recommended for the DSO.'

'Ah,' Huntley said.

'I do see what you mean by unusual,' Balfour Graham said.

'The point is he wants to go back.'

'Right, let's see him.'

Sassoon came in and saluted. Rivers watched the other two. Balfour
Graham acknowledged the salute pleasantly enough. Major Huntley
positively beamed. Rivers took Sassoon through the recent past, framing
his questions to require no more than a simple yes or no. Sassoon's
manner was excellent. Exactly the right mixture of confidence and
deference. Rivers turned to Balfour Graham.

Balfour Graham was shuffling about among his papers. Suddenly,
he looked up. 'No nightmares?'

'No, sir.'


215



REGENERATION


Sassooii's expression didn't change, but Rivers sensed he was lying.

'Never?'

'Not since I left the 4th London, sir.'

'That was in ... April?'

'Yes, sir.'

Balfour Graham looked at Rivers. Rivers looked at the ceiling.

'Major Huntley?'

Major Huntley leaned forward. 'Rivers tells us you've changed
your mind about the war. Is that right?'

A startled glance. 'No, sir.'

Balfour Graham and Huntley looked at each other.

'You haven't changed your views?' Balfour Graham asked.

'No, sir.' Sassoon's gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Rivers. 'I
believe exactly what I believed in July. Only if possible more
strongly.'

A tense silence.

'I see,' Balfour Graham said.

'Wasn't there something in The Times'?' Huntley asked. 'I seem

to . . .'

He reached across for the file. Rivers leant forward, pinning it to the
table with his elbow. 'But you do now feel quite certain it's your duty
to go back?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you have no doubts about that?'

'None whatsoever.'

'Well,' Balfour Graham said as the door closed behind Sassoon, 'I
suppose you are sure about this, Rivers? He's not going to go back and
foment rebellion in the ranks?'

'No, he won't do that. He won't do anything to lower the morale of
his men.'

'I hope you're right. He was lying about the nightmares, you

know.'

'Yes, I gathered that.'

'I suppose he thinks that might be a reason for keeping him here. The point is 
do we see a reason for keeping him here? Huntley?'

Major Huntley seemed to return from a great distance. 'Spanish
Jews.'

Balfour Graham looked blank.

'Father's side. Spanish Jews.'

'You know the family?' Rivers asked.


216

I

REGENERATION


'Good lord, yes. Mother was a Thornycroft.' He shook his head. 'Ah well. Hybrid 
vigour.'

Rivers was across the rose garden several paces ahead of Balfour
Graham. 'So you think he's fit?'

' 'Course he's fit. Good God, man, how often do you see a physique
like that, even in the so-called upper classes?'

They were back to eugenics again, but for once Rivers had no desire
to interrupt.


After dinner Sassoon came to say goodbye. He'd been told the result of
the Board and had spent the intervening time packing. Rivers hadn't expected 
him to linger. Apart from Owen, he'd made no friends at
Craiglockhart, not even Anderson, though they'd spent a large part of
every day together. And he'd never bothered to disguise his hatred of
the place.

'What are you going to do?' Rivers asked.

'Oh, I'll have a couple of days in London, then go home, I suppose.'

'Time for a consultation with Dr Mercier? No, I mean it.'

'I know you mean it. You old fox. Then Garsington, try to explain
myself to the pacifists.' He pulled a face. 'I don't look forward to that.'

'Blame me. They will.'

'I shall do no such thing.'

'It's a possible way of telling the story, you know.'

'Yes, I know. But it's not the way I'd tell it. Was it difficult, the
Board?'

'No, surprisingly easy. Major Huntley thinks you have a great future
as a rose bush. Hybrid vigour.'

'Ah, I see. Dad's lot.'

'I must say the sheer force of your refusal to recant came as rather a
shock.'

Sassoon looked away. 'I couldn't lie.'

'You managed all right about the nightmares.'

Silence.

'How long has that been going on?'

'Since you left. I'll be all right once I'm out of this place.'

Sassoon didn't want to talk about the nightmares. He was feeling
distinctly cheerful. Exactly the same feeling he had had on board ship
going to France, watching England slide away into the mist. No
doubts, no scruples, no agonizing, just a straightforward, headlong
retreat towards the front.


217


REGENERATION

1

Rivers seemed to read his thoughts. 'Don't take unnecessary risks.'

'No, of course not,' Sassoon said. Though he thought he might.

He stood up, visibly anxious to be off. Rivers followed him to the
door and then out into the entrance hall. Balfour Graham and Huntley
were there, deep in conversation. It was going to be a very public
farewell.

Till keep in touch,' Sassoon said.

'Yes. Try and see me before you leave England.'

They shook hands. Then Sassoon, glancing sideways at the colonel
and the major, smiled a distinctly conspiratorial smile and came smartly
to the salute. 'Thank you, sir.'

For a moment, it was Callan standing there. Then the electrical "f

room at Queen Square faded, and Rivers was back at Craiglockhart,       ""

on the black and white tiled floor, alone.

He returned to his desk, and drew a stack of files towards him. He
was writing brief notes on the patients who'd been Boarded that day,
but this he could do almost automatically. His thoughts wandered as
he wrote. He wasted no time wondering how he would feel if Siegfried
were to be maimed or killed, because this was a possibility with any
patient who returned to France. He'd faced that already, many times.
If anything, he was amused by the irony of the situation, that he, who
was in the business of changing people, should himself have been
changed and by somebody who was clearly unaware of having done it.

It was a far deeper change, though, than merely coming to believe
that a negotiated peace might be possible, and desirable. That at least it
ought to be explored. He remembered telling Head how he had tried
to change his life when he came back from Melanesia for the second
time and how that attempt had failed. He'd gone on being reticent,
introverted, reclusive. Of course it had been a very introverted, self
conscious attempt, and perhaps that was why it hadn't worked. Here
in this building, where he had no time to be introverted or self
conscious, where he hardly had a moment to himself at all, the
changes had taken place without his knowing. That was not Siegfried.
That was all of them. Burns and Prior and Pugh and a hundred others.
As a young man he'd been both by temperament and conviction deeply
conservative, and not merely in politics. Now, in middle age, the sheer
extent of the mess seemed to be forcing him into conflict with the
authorities over a very wide range of issues . . . medical, military.
Whatever. A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic
or unquestioning allegiance. Perhaps the rebellion of the old might


218


REGENERATION


count for rather more than the rebellion of the young. Certainly poor
Siegfried's rebellion hadn't counted for much, though he reminded
himself that he couldn't know that. It had been a completely honest
action and such actions are seeds carried on the wind. Nobody can tell
where, or in what circumstances, they will bear fruit.

How on earth was Siegfried going to manage in France? His opposition
to the war had not changed. If anything it had hardened. And to
go back to fight, believing as he did, would be to encounter internal
divisions far deeper than anything he'd experienced before. Siegfried's
'solution' was to tell himself that he was going back only to look after
some men, but that formula would not survive the realities of France.
However devoted to his men's welfare a platoon commander might
be, in the end he is there to kill, and to train other people to kill. Poetry
and pacifism are a strange preparation for that role. Though Siegfried
had performed it before, and with conspicuous success. But then his
hatred of the war had not been as fully fledged, as articulate, as it was
now.

It was a dilemma with one very obvious way out. Rivers knew,
though he had never voiced his knowledge, that Sassoon was going
back with the intention of being killed. Partly, no doubt, this was
youthful self-dramatization. /'// show them. They'll be sorry. But underneath
that, Rivers felt there was a genuine and very deep desire for
death.

And if death were to be denied? Then he might well break down. A
real breakdown, this time.

Rivers saw that he had reached Sassoon's file. He read through the
admission report and the notes that followed it. There was nothing
more he wanted to say that he could say. He drew the final page
towards him and wrote: Nov. 26, 1917. Discharged to duty.


219


author's note


Fact and fiction are so interwoven in this book that it may help the
reader to know what is historical and what is not. Siegfried Sassoon
(1886--1967) did, in July 1917, protest against the continuation of the
war. Robert Graves persuaded him to attend a Medical Board and he
was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he came under the care
of Dr W. H. R. Rivers, FRS (1864-1922), the distinguished neurologist
and social anthropologist, who then held the rank of captain in the
RAMC. During Sassoon's stay he formed a friendship with one of Dr
Brock's patients, Wilfred Owen (1893--1918), though it is probably
fair to say that this friendship played a more central role in Owen's life,
then and later, than it did in Sassoon's.

Rivers's methods of treating his patients are described in 'The Repression
of War Experience' (Lancet, 2 Feb. 1918) and in his posthumously
published book Conflict and Dream (London, Kegan Paul, 1923), in
which Sassoon makes a brief appearance as 'Patient B'.

Dr Lewis Yealland's rather different methods of treating his patients
are described in detail in his book: Hysterical Disorders of Warfare (London, 
Macmillan, 1918).

There is an interesting discussion of Rivers's pre-war work with
Henry Head on nerve regeneration, and the concept of protopathic
and epicritic innervation which evolved from it, in 'The Dog Beneath
the Skin' by Jonathan Miller (Listener, 20 July 1972).

The amendments suggested by Sassoon to the early draft of'Anthem
for Doomed Youth' appear in Sassoon's handwriting on the MSS. See Wilfred Owen: 
The Complete Poems and Fragments, Vol. II, edited by Jon
Stallworthy (Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press and Oxford University
Press, 1983). Two modern texts which contain stimulating discussions
of 'shell-shock' are No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World
War I by Eric Leed (Cambridge University Press, 1979) and The
Female Malady by Elaine Showaiter (Virago Press, 1987).

Julian Dadd, whose psychiatric illness caused Sassoon some concern
during his stay at Craiglockhart, subsequently went on to make a
complete recovery.


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R r G P N F R A The I O N


I'm grateful for help received from the staff of the following libraries:
Sheffield Public Library, Newcastle University Medical Library, Cambridge
University Library, Napier Polytechnic Library, Edinburgh
(formerly Craiglockhart War Hospital), The Oxford University
English Faculty Library, the Imperial War Museum, and St John's
College, Cambridge, where the Deputy Librarian M. Pratt did much
to make my visit interesting and enjoyable.




THE EYE IN THE DOOR
It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the
thorough and primitive duality oj man; I saw that, of the two natures that 
contended
in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, 
it was
only because I was radically both . . .


The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
-- R. L. Stevenson
Part One
(

f
ONE


In formal beds beside the Serpentine, early tulips stood in tightlipped
rows. Billy Prior spent several moments setting up an enfilade, then,
releasing his companion's arm, seized an imaginary machine-gun and
blasted the heads off the whole bloody lot of them.

Myra stared in amazement. 'You barmy bugger.'

He shook his head sadly. 'Five months in a loony bin last year.'

'Go on.'

She didn't believe him, of course. Smiling, he came back and offered
her his arm. They had been wandering along beside the lake for an
hour, but now the afternoon was waning. A coppery light, more like
autumn than spring, slanted across the grass, turning the thorned twigs
of rose bushes into strips of live electric filament that glowed, reddish,
in the dusk.

Prior, always self-conscious, was aware of approving glances following
them as they passed. They made a romantic picture, he supposed.
The girl, young and pretty, clinging to the arm of a man in uniform, a
man, moreover, wearing a greatcoat so grotesquely stained and battered
it had obviously seen a good deal of active service. As indeed it had,
and was about to see more, if only he could persuade the silly bitch to
lie on it.

'You're cold,' he said tenderly, unbuttoning the greatcoat. 'Put your
hand in here. You know, we'd be warmer under the trees. We'd be
out of the wind.'

She paused, doubtfully, for by the lake it was still light, whereas the
avenue of trees he was pointing to smoked darkness. 'All right,' she
said at last.

They set off across the grass, their shadows stretching ahead of them,
black, attenuated figures that reached the trees and began to climb
before they were anywhere near. In the darkness they leant against the
trunk of one of the trees and started to kiss. After a while she moaned,
and her thighs slackened, and he pressed her back against the fissured
bark. His open greatcoat shielded them both. Her hands slid round
him, underneath his tunic, and grasped his buttocks, pulling him hard

229

1

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


against her. She was tugging at his waistband and buttons and he
helped her unfasten them, giving her free play with his cock and balls.
His hands were slowly inching up her skirt. Already he'd found the
place where the rough stockings gave way to smooth skin. 'Shall we
lie down?'

Her hands came up to form a barrier. 'What, in this?'

'You'll be warm enough.'

'I bloody won't. I'm nithered now.' To emphasize the point she
pressed her hands into her armpits and rocked herself.

'All right,' he said, his voice hardening. 'Let's go back to the flat.'
He'd wanted to avoid doing that, because he knew his landlady would
be in, and watching.

She didn't look at him. 'No, I think I'd better be getting back.'

'I'll take you.'

'No, I'd rather say goodbye here, if you don't mind. Me mother
in-law lives five doors down.'

'You were keen enough the other night.'

Myra smiled placatingly. 'Look, I had a woman come nosying
round. The voluntary police, you know? They can come into your
house, or anything, they don't have to ask. And this one's a right old
cow. I knew her before the war. She was all for women's rights. I says,
"What about my rights? Aren't I a woman?" But there's no point
arguing with 'em. They can get your money stopped. And anyway it
isn't right, is it? With Eddie at the Front?'

Prior said in a clipped, authoritative voice, 'He was at the Front on
Friday night.' He heard the note of self-righteousness, and saw himself,
fumbling with the fly buttons of middle-class morality. Good God, no. He'd 
rather tie a knot in it than have to live with that image. 'Come
on,' he said. 'I'll walk you to the station.'

He strode towards Lancaster Gate, not caring if she followed or not.
She came trotting breathlessly along beside him. 'We can still be friends,
can't we?'

He felt her gaze on his face.

'Can't we?'

He stopped and turned to face her. 'Myra, you're the sort of girl
who ends up in a ditch with her stockings round her neck.'

He walked on more slowly. After a while, her hand came creeping
through his arm, and, after a moment's hesitation, he left it there.

'Have you got a girl?' she said.

A brief struggle. 'Yes.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


She nodded, satisfied. 'Thought you had. Lying little git, aren't you?
Friday night, you said you hadn't.'

'We both said a bellyful on Friday night.'

At the underground station he bought her ticket, and she reached up
and kissed his cheek as if nothing had happened. Well, he thought,
nothing had happened. On the other side of the barrier she turned, and
looked as if she might be regretting the evening they'd planned, but
then she gave a little wave, stepped out on to the moving staircase and
was carried smoothly away.

Outside the station he hesitated. The rest of the evening stretched in
front of him and he didn't know what to do. He thought about going
for a drink, but rejected the idea. If he started drinking as early as this
and in this mood, he'd end up drunk, and he couldn't afford to do that;
he had to be clear-headed for the prison tomorrow. He drifted aimlessly
along.

It was just beginning to be busy, people hurrying to restaurants and
bars, doing their best to forget the shortages, the skimped clothes, the
grey bread. All winter, it seemed to Prior, an increasingly frenetic
quality had been creeping into London life. Easily justified, of course.
Soldiers home on leave had to be given a good time; they mustn't be
allowed to remember what they were going back to, and this gave
everybody else a magnificent excuse for never thinking about it at all.

Though this week it had been difficult to avoid thinking. Haig's
April 13th Order of the Day had appeared in full in every newspaper.
He knew it off by heart. Everybody did.


There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must
be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the
wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on
to the end.


Whatever effect the Order had on the morale of the army, it had
produced panic among civilians. Some women, apparently, were planning
in all seriousness how they should kill themselves and their children
when the Germans arrived. Those atrocity stories from the first
months of the war had done the trick. Rather too well. Nuns with their breasts 
cut off. Priests hung upside-down and used as clappers to
ring their own bells. Not that there hadn't been atrocities, but prisoners
of war were always the main victims, and the guilt was more evenly
distributed than the press liked to think.

There were times -- and tonight was one of them -- when Prior was


231

THE EYE IN THE DOOR




made physically sick by the sight and sound and smell of civilians. He
remembered the stench that comes off a battalion of men marching
back from the line, the thick yellow stench, and he thought how
preferable it was to this. He knew he had to get off the streets, away
from the chattering crowds and the whiffs of perfume that assaulted his
nostrils whenever a woman walked past.

Back in the park, under the trees, he began to relax. Perhaps it was
his own need that coloured his perceptions, but it seemed to him that
the park on this spring evening was alive with desire. Silhouetted
against the sunset, a soldier and his girl meandered along, leaning
against each other so heavily that if either had withdrawn the other
would have fallen. It made him think of himself and Sarah on the
beach in Scotland, and he turned away sharply. No point thinking        |

about that. It would be six weeks at least before he could hope to see
her again. Further along towards Marble Arch the figures were solitary.
Army boots tramped and slurred along the paths or, in the deepest
shadow, jetted sparks.

He sat on a bench and lit a cigarette, still trying to decide what to do
with the stump of his evening. He needed sex, and he needed it badly.
Tossing off was no use, because . . . because it was no use. Prostitutes
were out because he didn't pay. He remembered telling Rivers, who'd
been his doctor at Craiglockhart War Hospital, the 'loony bin' where
he'd spent five months of the previous year, about a brothel in Amiens,
how the men, the private soldiers, queued out on to the pavement and
were allowed two minutes each. 'How long do officers get?' Rivers
had asked. 'I don't know,' Prior had said. 'Longer than that.' And
then, spitting the words, 7 don't pay.' No doubt Rivers had thought it
rather silly, a young man's ridiculous pride in his sexual prowess, his
ability to 'get it' free. But it was nothing to do with that. Prior didn't
pay because once, some years ago, he had been paid, and he knew
exactly how the payer looks to the one he's paying.

'Got a light?'

Automatically, Prior began tapping his pockets. At first he hardly
registered the existence of the speaker, except as an unwelcome interruption
to his thoughts, but then, as he produced the matches, some
unconsciously registered nervousness in the other man's voice made
him look up. He had been going to offer the box, but now he changed
his mind, took out a match and struck it himself. The rasp and flare
sounded very loud. He cupped his hands to shield the flame, and held it
out as the other bent towards it. An officer's peaked cap, dark eyes, a


232
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


thin moustache defining a full mouth, the face rounded, though not
fat. Prior was sure he knew him, though he couldn't remember where
he'd seen him before. When the cigarette was lit, he didn't immediately
move off, but sat further along the bench, looking vaguely around
him, the rather prominent Adam's apple jerking in his throat. His left
leg was stretched out awkwardly in front of him, presumably the
explanation of the wound stripe on his sleeve.

Prior could see the problem. This wasn't exactly the right area,
though it bordered upon it, and his own behaviour, though interesting,
had not been definitely inviting. He was tempted to tease. Instead he
moved closer and said, 'Have you anywhere to go?'

'Yes.' The man looked up. 'It's not far.'


The square contained tall, narrow, dark houses, ranged round a
fenced-off lawn with spindly trees. The lawn and the surrounding
flowerbeds were rank with weeds. Further along, on the right, a bomb
had knocked out three houses and partially demolished a fourth, leaving
a huge gap. They walked along, not talking much. As they approached
the gap, the pavement became gritty beneath their feet, pallid with the
white dust that flowed so copiously from stricken houses and never
seemed to clear, no matter how carefully the ruin was fenced off. Prior
was aware of a distinct sideways pull towards the breach. He'd felt this
before, walking past other bombed sites. He had no idea whether this
sideways tug was felt by everybody, or whether it was peculiar to him,
some affinity with places where the established order has been violently
assailed.

They stopped in front of No. 27. The windows were shuttered. A
cat, hunched and defensive, crouched on the basement steps, growling
over something it had found.

Prior's companion was having trouble with the lock. 'Part of the
damage," he said over his shoulder, pulling a face. He jabbed the door
with his shoulder, then seized the knob and pulled it towards him. 'It
works if you pull, I keep forgetting that.'

'Not too often, I hope,' said Prior.

His companion turned and smiled, and for a moment there was a
renewed pull of sexual tension between them. He took off his cap and
greatcoat, and held out his hand for Prior's. 'The family's in the
country. I'm staying at my club.' He hesitated. 'I suppose I'd better
introduce myself. Charles Manning.'

'Billy Prior.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Covertly, they examined each other. Manning had a very round
head, emphasized by thick, sleek dark hair which he wore brushed
back with no parting. His eyes were alert. He resembled some kind
of animal, Prior thought, an otter perhaps. Manning saw a thin, fair
haired man, twenty-three or four, with a blunt-nosed, high-cheekboned
face and a general air of picking his way delicately through life.
Manning pushed open a door on the left, and a breath of dead air came
into the hall. 'Why don't you go in? I won't be a minute.'

Prior entered. Tall windows shuttered, furniture shrouded in white
sheets. A heavy smell of soot from the empty grate. Everything was
under dust-sheets except the tall mirror that reflected, through the
open door, the mirror in the hall. Prior found himself staring down a
long corridor of Priors, some with their backs to him, none more
obviously real than the rest. He moved away.

'Would you like a drink?' Manning asked from the door.

'Yes, please.'

'Whisky all right?'

'Fine.'

Alone, Prior walked across to the grand piano, lifted the edge of the
dust-sheet and found himself looking at a photograph of a woman
with two small boys, one of them clutching a sailing boat to his chest.

When Manning came back, carrying a whisky bottle, a jug and two
glasses, Prior was staring at a crack above the door. 'That looks a bit
ominous,' he said.

'Yes, doesn't it? I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it,
really. One can't get workmen, so I just come in and look at it now
and then.' He held up the jug. 'Water?'

'Just a dash.'

They moved across to the fireside chairs. Manning pulled off the
sheets, and Prior settled back against the stiff brocade. It didn't give at
all, but held him tensely upright. They started making the sort of
conversation they might have made if they'd been introduced in the
mess. Prior watched Manning carefully, noting the ME ribbon, the
wound stripe, the twitches, the signs of tension, the occasional stammer.
He was in a state, though it was difficult to tell how much of his
nervousness was due to the situation. Which was dragging on a bit. If
this went on they'd demolish the whole bloody bottle and still be
swopping regimental. chit-chat at midnight. All very nice, Prior        j

thought, but not what I came for. He noticed that Manning's eyes,
though they roamed all over the place, always returned to the stars on


234
THE EYE IN THF DOOR


Prior's sleeve. Well, you knew I was an officer, he said silently. He was
beginning to suspect Manning might be one of those who cannot -- simply cannot 
- let go sexually with a social equal. Prior sighed, and
stood up. 'Do you mind if I take this off?' he said. 'I'm quite warm.'

He wasn't warm. In fact, to coin a phrase, he was bloody nithered.
However. He took off his tie, tunic and shirt, and threw them over the
back of a chair. Manning said nothing, simply watched. Prior ran his fingers 
through his cropped hair till it stood up in spikes, lit a cigarette,
rolled it in a particular way along his bottom lip, and smiled. He'd
transformed himself into the sort of working-class boy Manning would
think it was all right to fuck. A sort of seminal spittoon. And it
worked. Manning's eyes grew dark as his pupils flared. Bending over
him, Prior put his hand between his legs, thinking he'd probably never
felt a spurt of purer class antagonism than he felt at that moment. He
roughened his accent. 'A' right?'

'Yes. Let's go upstairs.'

Prior followed him. On the first floor a door stood open, leading
into a large bedroom with a double bed. Manning pulled the door
shut. Prior smiled faintly. 'E would not take Oi into the bed where 'e
'ad deflowered 'is broide. Instead 'e went up and up and bloody up. To
what were obviously the servants' quarters. Manning pushed open a
door at the end of the corridor, handed Prior the lamp and said, 'I
won't be a minute.'

Prior went in. A double bed with a brass bedstead almost filled the
tiny room. He sat on the edge and bounced up and down. It was quite
possibly the noisiest bed he'd ever encountered. Thank God the house
was empty. Apart from the bed there was a washstand with a jug and
bowl, a table with a looking-glass, and a small closet curtained off. He
got up and pulled the curtain back. Two housemaids' uniforms hung
there, looking almost like the maids themselves, the sleeves and caps
had been so neatly arranged. A smell came from the closet: lavender
and sweat, a sad smell. Prior's mother had started her life in service in
just such a house as this. He looked round the room, the freezing little
box of a room, with its view of roofs, and, on a sudden impulse, got
one of the uniforms out and buried his face in the armpit, inhaling the
smell of sweat. This impulse had nothing to do with sex, though it
came from a layer of personality every bit as deep. Manning came
back into the room just as Prior raised his head. Seeing Prior with the
uniform held against him, Manning looked, it had to be said, daunted.
Prior smiled, and put the uniform back on the peg.


235
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Manning set a small jar down on the table by the bed. The click of
glass on wood brought them into a closer, tenser relationship than
anything they'd so far managed to achieve. Prior finished undressing
and lay down on the bed. Manning's leg was bad. Very bad. Prior
leant forward to examine the knee, and for a moment they might have
been boys in the playground again, examining each other's scabs.

'It looks as if you're out of it.'

'Probably. The tendons've shortened, you see. They think I've got
about as much movement as I'm going to get. But then who knows?
The way things are going, is anybody out of it?'

Prior straightened up, and, since he was in the neighbourhood,
began to rub his face across the hair in Manning's groin. Manning's
cock stirred and rose and Prior took it into his mouth, but even then,
for a long time, he simply played, flicking his tongue round and round
the glistening dome. Manning's thighs tautened. After a while his hand
came up and caressed Prior's cropped hair, his thumb massaging the
nape of his neck. Prior raised his head and saw that Manning looked
nervous, rightly, since in this situation it was a gesture of tenderness
that would precipitate violence, if anything did. And Manning was in
no state to cope with that. He went back to his sucking, clasping
Manning's buttocks in his two hands and moving his mouth rapidly up
and down the shaft. Manning pushed him gently away and got into
bed. They lay stretched out for a moment side by side. Prior rolled on
to his elbow and started to stroke Manning's chest, belly and thighs.
He was thinking how impossible it is to sum up sex in terms of who
stuffs what into where. This movement of his hand had in it lust;
resentment, of Manning's use of the room among other things; sympathy,
for the wound; envy, because Manning was honourably out of it
. . . And a growing awareness that while he had been looking at Manning,
Manning had also been looking at him. Prior's expression hardened.
He thought, Well, at least I don't twitch as much as you do. The
stroking hand stopped at Manning's waist, and he tried to turn him
over, but Manning resisted. 'No,' he said. 'Like this.'

Athletic sod. Prior unscrewed the jar, greased his cock with a mixture
of vaseline and spit, and wiped the residue on Manning's arse. He
guided Manning's legs up his chest, being exceedingly careful not to
jerk the knee. He was too eager, and the position was hopeless for
control, he was fighting himself before he'd got an inch in, and then
Manning yelped and tried to pull away. Prior started to withdraw,
then suddenly realized that Manning needed to be hurt. 'Keep still,' he


236
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said, ami went on fucking. It was a dangerous game. Prior was capable
of real sadism, and knew it, and the knee was only a inch or so away
from his hand. He came quickly, with deep shuddering groans, a
feeling of being pulled out of himself that started in his throat. Carefully,
he lowered Manning's legs and sucked him off. He was so
primed he was clutching Prior's head and gasping almost before he'd
started. 'I needed that,' he said, when it was over. 'I needed a good
fucking.'

You all do, Prior thought. Manning went to the bathroom. Prior
reached out and turned the looking-glass towards him. Into this glass
they had looked, half past five every morning, winter and summer,
yawning, bleary-eyed, checking to see their caps were on straight and
their hair tucked away. He remembered his mother telling him that, in
the house where she'd worked, if a maid met a member of the family
in the corridor she had to stand with her face turned to the wall.

Manning came back carrying the whisky bottle and glasses. He was
limping badly. Despite Prior's efforts the position couldn't have done
the knee any good.

'Where d'you get it?' Prior asked, nodding at the wound.

'Passchendaele.'

'Oh, yes. Your lot were in the assault on the ridge?'

'That's right.' Manning poured the whisky and sat at the end of the
bed, propping himself up against the bedstead, and stretching his left
leg out in front of him. 'Great fun.'

Prior said, 'I've just had a Board.' He didn't want to talk about his
condition, but he was incapable of leaving the subject alone. Manning's
silence on the subject, when a question would have been so much
more natural, had begun to irritate him.

'What did they say?' Manning asked.

'They haven't said anything yet. I'm supposed to be Permanent
Home Service, but with things the way they are . . .'

Manning hesitated, then asked, 'It is neurasthenia, isn't it?'

No, Prior wanted to say, it's raging homicidal mania, with a particular
predilection for dismembering toffee-nosed gits with wonky knees.
'No, it's asthma,' he said. 'I was neurasthenic, but then I had two
asthmatic attacks in the hospital, so that confused things a bit.'

'Which hospital were you in?'

'Craiglockhart. It's up in '

'Ah, then you know Rivers.'

Prior stared. 'He was my doctor. Still is. He's . . . he's in London now.'


237
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Yes, I know.'

It was Prior's turn not to ask the obvious question.

'Are you still on sick leave?' Manning asked, after a pause.

'No, I'm at the Ministry of Munitions. In the . . .' He looked at
Manning. 'And that's where I've seen you. I knew I had.'

Manning smiled, but he was very obviously not pleased. 'Just as well
I didn't call myself "Smith". I thought about it.'

'If you're going to do that I'd remove the letters from the hall table
first. They aren't addressed to "Smith".' Prior looked down into his
glass, and gave up the struggle. 'How do you know Rivers?'

Manning smiled. 'He's my doctor, too.'

'Shellshock?'

'No. Not exactly. I ... er ... I was picked up by the police. About
two months ago. Not quite caught in the act, but . . . The young man
disappeared as soon as we got to the police station. Anyway.'

'What happened?'

'Oh, we all sat around. Nobody did anything unpleasant. I sent for
my solicitor, and eventually he arrived, and they let me go. Wound
helped. Medal helped.' He looked directly at Prior. 'Connections helped.
You mustn't despise me too easily, you know. I'm not a fool. And
then I went home and waited. My solicitor seemed to think if it went
to court I'd get two years, but they probably wouldn't give me hard
labour because of the leg.'

'That's big of them.'

'Yes. Isn't it? Then somebody said the thing to do was to go to a
psychologist and get treatment and and . . . and that would help. So I
went to Dr Head, who has quite a reputation in this field - I was
actually told in so many words "Henry Head can cure sodomites" -- and he said 
he couldn't do me, he was snowed under, and he recommended
Rivers. So I went to him, and he said he'd take me on.'

'Do you want to be cured?'

'No.'

'What does he do?'

'Talks. Or rather, /talk. He listens.'

'About sex?'

'No, not very often. The war, mainly. You see that's where the
confusion comes in because he took one look at me and decided I was
neurasthenic. I mean, I can see his point. I was in quite a state when I
came out of hospital. A lot worse than I realized at the time. One night
at dinner I just picked up a vase and smashed it against the wall. It was


238
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


quite a large party, about twelve people, and there was this awful . . .
silence. And I couldn't explain why I'd done it. Except the vase was
hideous. But then my wife said, "So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is
that sort of thinking going to lead?" ' He smiled. 'I can't talk to anybody
else, so I talk to him.'

Prior put his hand on Manning's arm. 'Are you going to be all
right? I mean, are they going to leave you alone?'

'I don't know. I think if they were going to bring charges they'd've
brought them by now.' His voice deepened. ' "At that moment there was
a knock on the door

Prior was thinking. 'All the same, it's rather convenient, isn't it?
That you're neurasthenic?'

'Not particularly.'

'I meant for Rivers. He doesn't have to talk abou '

'I don't know what Rivers thinks. Anyway, it's the war I need to talk
about. And even with him, you know, there are some things I couldn't--'

'You will.'

They lay and looked at each other. Manning said, 'You were going
to say which part of the ministry --'

'Yes, so I was. Intelligence.'

'With Major Lode?'

'Yes. With Major Lode. And you?'

'I'm on the fifth floor.'

Evidently the location was the answer. Manning turned and threw
his arm across Prior's chest. 'Do you fancy a bit of turn and turn
about? Or don't you do that?'

Prior smiled. 'I do anything.'


TWO


Charles Manning left the Ministry of Munitions two hours earlier than
usual and went to his house, where he'd arranged to meet a builder
who'd promised to repair the bomb damage. It was mid-afternoon. A
surprisingly sticky day for spring, warm and damp. When the sun
shone, as it did fitfully, emerging from banks of black cloud, the
young leaves on the trees glowed a vivid, almost virulent green.


239
THE E Y F, IN THE DOOR

1

He was walking abstractedly past the bombed site, when the crunch
of grit and the smell of charred brick made him pause, and peer
through a gap in the fence. The demolished houses had left an outline
of themselves on either side of the gap, like after-images on the retina.
He saw the looped and trellised bedroom wallpaper that once only the
family and its servants would have seen, exposed now to wind and rain
and the gaze of casual passers-by. Nothing moved in that wilderness,
but, somewhere out of sight, dust leaked steadily from the unstaunch
able wound.

Suddenly a cat appeared, a skinny cat, one of the abandoned pets
that hung around the square. It began picking its way among the
rubble, sharply black and sleek, a silhouette at once angular and sinuous.
It stopped, and Manning was aware of baleful yellow eyes turned in his  jjl

direction, of a cleft pink nose raised to sift the air. Then it continued on
its way, the soft pads of its feet finding spaces between shards of
glittering glass. Manning watched till it was out of sight. Then, thinking
he must get a move on, he swung his stiff leg up the steps to his
house and inserted his key in the lock, remembering, with a faint
smile, that he must pull and not push.

There was an envelope in the post-box. He took it out and carried it
through into the drawing-room, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed
to the darkness. A heavy smell of soot. There must have been
another fall: chimney-sweeping was another job one couldn't get done.
He looked down at the envelope. Typewritten. Tradesman, probably.
His family and friends all knew he was staying at his club. He put the
letter down on the dust-sheet that covered the sofa and walked to the
other end of the room, where he opened the shutters, letting in a flood
of sickly yellow light.

He went to look at the crack above the door. Is it a load-bearing
wall? the builder had asked. Manning thumped with his clenched fist.
It didn't sound hollow or feel flimsy, but then these houses were very
solidly built. He crossed to the front wall, banged again and thought
perhaps he could detect a difference. Not much in it, though. He went
back to the crack and noticed that the whole surround of the door had
been loosened. In fact the more closely one examined it the worse it
appeared. That looks ominous, Prior had said, smiling slightly. Odd
lad. Even as he felt himself begin to stir at the recollection of the
evening, Manning's mind was at work, categorizing. At first, noting
Prior's flattened vowels, he'd thought, oh yes. Temporary gentleman.
A nasty, snobbish little phrase, but everybody used it, though obviously


240
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


one tried not to use it in connection with people one liked. But the
amazing thing was how persistent one's awareness of class distinction
was. The mind seemed capable of making these minute social assessments
in almost any circumstances. He remembered the Somme, how
the Northumberlands and Durhams had lain, where the machine-guns
had caught them, in neat swathes, like harvested wheat. Later that
night, crashing along a trench in pitch-blackness, trying desperately to
work out where the frontage he was responsible for ended, he'd stumbled
into a Northumberlands' officer, very obviously shaken by the
carnage inflicted on his battalion. And who could blame him? God
knows how many they'd lost. Manning, sympathizing, steadying, well
aware that his own nerves had not yet been tested, had none the less
found time to notice that the Northumberlands' officer dropped his
aitches. He'd been jarred by it. Horrified by the reaction, but jarred
nevertheless. And the odd thing was he knew if the man had been a
private, he would not have been jarred, he would have handled the
situation much better.

As the evening with Prior had gone on, the description 'temporary
gentleman' had come to seem less and less appropriate. It suggested one
of those dreadful people -- well, they were dreadful -- who aped their
betters, anxious to get everything 'right', and became, in the process,
pallid, morally etiolated and thoroughly nauseating. Prior was saved
from that not because he didn't imitate -- he did -- but because he
wasn't anxious. Once or twice one might almost have thought one
detected a glint of amusement. A hint of parody, even. All the same,
the basic truth was the man was neither fish nor fowl nor good red
herring. Socially. Sexually too, of course, though this was a less comfortable
reflection. He had a girl in the north, he said, but then they all said
that. Manning had suggested they should meet again, and Prior had
agreed, but politely, without much enthusiasm. Probably he wouldn't
come, and probably it would be just as well. His working at the
Ministry brought the whole thing rather too close to ... well. Too
close.

Manning looked at his watch. Ten minutes before the builder was
due. He walked across to the piano, lifted the dust-sheet and brought
out the photograph of Jane and the boys. Taken last summer. What a
little podge Robert had been. Still was. He'd always be a round
cheeked, nondescript sort of child. He was clutching the boat as if he
suspected somebody was planning to take it away from him. No doubt
James had been. He's like me, Manning thought, looking at Robert.


241
THE EYE IN THE. DOOR

I

He felt an almost painful love for his elder son, and sometimes he heard
himself speaking too sharply to the boy, but it was only because he
could see so much of himself. He knew the areas of vulnerability, and
that made him afraid, because in the end one cannot protect one's
children. Everybody -- Robert too, probably, that was the sad thing --  'm

assumed James was his favourite. It wasn't true. His love for James was
an altogether sunnier, less complicated emotion. He had more/un with
James, because he could see James was resilient. He had his mother's
dark, clearly defined brows, her cheekbones, her jaw, the same amused,
direct look. The photograph didn't do her justice; somehow the sunlight
had bleached the strength out of her face. Probably she looked
prettier because of it, but she also looked a good deal less like Jane. 'It
was hideous.' The vase he'd thrown at the wall. 'So is your Aunt
Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?' Typical Jane.
It sounded unsympathetic, but it wasn't. Not really. She was a woman
who could have faced any amount of physical danger without flinching,
but the shadows in the mind terrified her.

Manning moved across to the fireplace. On the way he noticed the
letter and picked it up again, wondering once more who would have
written to this address. There were no outstanding bills. Everybody
knew he was at the club. He began to open it, thinking he should
probably ask the builder to do something about the dent in the wall
where the vase had struck. Inside the envelope, instead of the expected
sheet of paper, was a newspaper cutting. He turned it the right way up
and read:


THE CULT OF THE CLITORIS


To be a member of Maud Allen's private performance in Oscar Wilde's Salome one 
has to apply to a Miss Valetta, of 9 Duke Street, Adelphi, WE. If
Scotland Yard were to seize the list of these members I have no doubt they
would secure the names of several thousand of the first 47,000.


He'd seen the paragraph before. It had been reproduced -- usually
without the heading -- in several respectable newspapers, though it had
originated in the Vigilante, Pemberton Billing's dreadful rag. Maud
Allan -- they hadn't even spelt her name right -- was sueing Pemberton
Billing for libel. A grave mistake, in Manning's view, because once in
the witness-box Pemberton Billing could accuse anybody with complete
impunity. He would be immune from prosecution. The people
he named would not. Of course you could see it from Maud Allan's


242
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


point of view. She would be ruined it she didn't sue. She was probably
ruined anyway.

The question was, why had it been sent to him, and by whom? The
postmark told him nothing useful. There was no covering letter. Manning
dropped the cutting on the sofa, then picked it up again, holding
the flimsy yellowing page between his thumb and forefinger. He wiped
his upper lip on the back of his hand. Then he turned to the mirror as if
to consult himself and, because he'd left the drawing-room door open,
found himself looking into a labyrinth of repeated figures. His name
was on that list. He was going to Salome, and not simply as an ordinary
member of the public, but in the company of Robert Ross who, as
Oscar Wilde's literary executor, had authorized the performance.

Immediately he began to ask himself whether there was an honourable
way out, but then he thought, no, that's no use. To back out now
would simply reveal the extent of his fear to to to ... to whoever was
watching. For obviously somebody was. Somebody had known to
send the cutting here.

Prior worked in the Intelligence Unit with Major Lode. Perhaps
that had something to do with it? He didn't know. He didn't know
anything, that was the devil of it.

The bell rang. Still holding the page, Manning went to the door. A
thin, spry, greying man, with rheumy blue eyes and 'a top o' the
morning to you, sorr' expression, stood on the step.

'Captain Manning?' He took off his cap. 'O'Brien, sir. I've come
about the repairs.'

Manning became aware that he was gaping. He swallowed, pushed
the cutting into his tunic pocket, and said, 'Yes, of course. Come in.'

He showed O'Brien the crack in the wall, feeling almost too dazed
to follow what he was saying. He made himself concentrate. It was a
load-bearing wall.

'How long do you think it'll take?'

O'Brien pursed his lips. 'Three days. Normally. Trouble is, you see,
sir, you can't get the lads. Williams now.' O'Brien shook his head
sadly. 'Good worker in his day. The nipper. Willing lad. Not forward
for his age. Samuels.' O'Brien tapped his chest. 'Dust gets on his
lungs.'

'How long?'

'Fortnight? Three weeks?'

'When can you start?'

'Any time, sir. Would Monday suit you?'


243
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


It had to be said O'Brien was a man who inspired instant mistrust. I
hope I'm doing the right thing, Manning thought, showing him to the
door. He went back to look at the crack again. In the course of
exploring its load-bearing properties O'Brien had dislodged a great
quantity of plaster. Manning looked down at the grey dust. He was
beginning to suspect O'Brien's real talent might be for demolition.
Oh, what does it matter, he thought. His fingers closed round the
cutting and he brought it out again. He'd remembered that, a couple
of months ago, when the article about the Black Book and the 47,000
had first appeared, Robert Ross had been sent a copy. Just like this.
Anonymously. No covering letter. He walked to the window and
looked into the garden. There was a curious tension about this yellow
light, as if there might be thunder in the offing. And the bushes -- all
overgrown, there'd been no proper pruning done for years - were
motionless, except for the very tips of their branches that twitched
ominously, like cats' tails. A few drops of rain began to fall, splashing
on to the dusty terrace. A memory struggled to surface. Of sitting
somewhere in the dust and rain beginning to fall. Drops had splashed
on to his face and hands and he'd started to cry, but tentatively, not
sure if this was the right response. And then a nursery maid came
running and swept him up.

He'd ask Ross tonight whether he'd received a cutting, or knew of
anybody else who had. Not that it would be reassuring. Ross was a
dangerous person to know, and would become more dangerous as the
hysteria over the Pemberton Billing case mounted. The prudent thing
would be to drop him altogether. Somehow, articulating this clearly     .,

for the first time helped enormously. Of course he wasn't going to
drop Ross. Of course he was going to Salome. It was a question of
courage in the end.

Why to the house? Anybody who knew him well enough to know
his name would be on the list of subscribers must also know he was
staying at his club. But then perhaps they also knew he visited the
house regularly, to check that everything was all right, and . . . other
things.

He mustn't fall into the trap of overestimating what they knew. At
the moment he was doing their job for them.

Opening the letter like this in his own home was in some ways a
worse experience than opening it at the club would have been. His
damaged house leaked memories of Jane and the children, and of
himself too, as he had been before the war, memories so vivid in


244
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


comparison with his present depleted self that he found himself moving
between pieces of shrouded furniture like his own ghost.

There was nothing to be gained by brooding like this. He made sure
the fallen plaster was caught on the dust-sheet and had not seeped
underneath to be trodden into the carpet, shuttered the windows,
replaced the photograph beneath the dust-sheet, and let himself out.

Rain was falling. As he left the square and started to walk briskly
down the Bayswater Road, reflections of buildings and shadows of
people shone fuzzily in the pavements, as if another city lay trapped
beneath the patina of water and grease. He kept his head down, thinking
he would go to see Ross tonight, and remembering too that he was
due to see Rivers next week. He passed the Lancaster Gate underground
with its breath of warm air, and walked on.

In Oxford Street a horse had fallen between the shafts of a van and
was struggling feebly to get to its feet. The usual knot of bystanders
had gathered. He was going to be all right. He was . . .

Suddenly, the full force of the intrusion into his home struck at him,
and he was cowering on the pavement of Oxford Street as if a seventy
hour bombardment were going on. He pretended to look in a shop
window, but he didn't see anything. The sensation was extraordinary,
one of the worst attacks he'd ever had. Like being naked, high up on a
ledge, somewhere, in full light, with beneath him only jeering voices
and millions of eyes.


THREE


Prior sat in the visitors' waiting-room at Aylesbury Prison, right foot
resting on his left knee, hands clasping his ankle, and stared around
him. The shabbiness of this room was in marked contrast to the brutal
but impressive blood-and-bandages facade of the prison, though the
shabbiness too was designed to intimidate. Everything - the chipped
green paint, the scuffed no-colour floor, the nailed-down chairs -- implied 
that those who visited criminals were probably criminals themselves.
A notice on the wall informed them of. the conditions under
which they might be searched.

Prior looked down at his greatcoat and flicked away an imaginary


245

speck of dust. This was not the battered and stained garment that Myra
had so foolishly refused to lie on, but an altogether superior version
which had cost two months' salary. In these circumstances, it was
worth every penny.

The door opened and the wardress came in. With very slightly
exaggerated courtesy, Prior rose to his feet. Sad but true, that nothing
puts a woman in her place more effectively than a chivalrous gesture
performed in a certain manner.

'Yes, well, it does seem to be in order,' she said.

He nodded. 'Good.'

'If you'd like to come this way.'

He reached the door first and held it open. He wasn't inclined to
waste sympathy on her, this middle-aged, doughy-skinned woman.
She had her own power, after all, more absolute than any he possessed.
If she were humiliated now, no doubt some clapped-out old whore
would be made to pay.

He followed her down the corridor and out into the yard.

'That's the women's block,' she said, pointing.

A gloomy, massive building. Six rows of windows, small and close
together, like little piggy eyes. Prior looked at the yard. 'But surely the
men can see the women when they exercise?'

'Oh, no,' she said. 'They can't see out of the windows. They're too
high up for that.'

He asked her one or two questions about the way the prison was
run, how the shift system worked, whether transport to the prison was
provided. It had occurred to him that it might not be some anonymous
whore who paid for his victory, but the woman he had come to see,
and he was anxious to avoid that. 'Shift working must be quite difficult,'
he said. 'Particularly for women.'

They stood in the cold yard while he got the story of her ailing
mother. Then he held the door of the women's block open for her, and this time 
she blushed instead of bridling, since the gesture was being
offered in a different spirit. Or she thought it was.

Another corridor. 'I know this is terribly irregular,' he said. 'A man
seeing a female prisoner alone. But you do understand, don't you? It is
a matter of security ..."

'Oh, yes, yes. The only reason THE EYE IN THE DOOR


I
questioned it was her being confined
to the cell. We know all about security. We've had a leader of the Irish
rebellion in here.' An internal struggle, then she burst out, 'She was a 
countess.'

I


246
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Her face lit up with all the awe and deference of which the English
working class is capable. Oh dear oh dear.

'Roper's a different kettle offish,' she went on. 'Common as muck.'

They went through another set of doors and into a large hall. Prior
would have liked some warning of this. He'd expected another corridor,
another room. Instead he found himself standing at the bottom of
what felt like a pit. The high walls were ringed with three tiers of iron
landings, studded by iron doors, linked by iron staircases. In the centre
of the pit sat a wardress who, simply by looking up, could observe
every door. Prior's escort went across and spoke to her colleague.

Prior looked around him, wondering what sort of women needed
to be kept in a place like this. Prostitutes, thieves, girls who 'overlaid'
their babies, abortionists who stuck their knitting needles into something
vital - did they really need to be here? A bell rang. Behind him
the doors opened and a dozen or so women trudged into the room,
diverging into two lines as they reached the stairs to the first landing.
They wore identical grey smocks that covered them from neck to
ankle and blended with the iron grey of the landings, so that the
women looked like columns of moving metal. Evidently they were
not allowed to speak, and for a while there was no sound except for
the clatter of their boots on the stairs, and a chorus of coughs.

Then a youngish woman turned her head and noticed him. Instantly,
a stir of excitement ran along the lines, like the rise of hair along a
dog's spine. They broke ranks and came crowding to the railings,
shouting down comments on what they could see, and speculations on
the size of what they couldn't. Somebody suggested he might like to
settle the matter by getting it out. Then a short square-headed woman
jostled her way to the front and lifted her smock to her shoulders, high
enough for it to become apparent that His Majesty's bounty did not
extend to the provision of knickers. She jabbed her finger repeatedly
towards the mound of thinning hair. Then a whistle blew, wardresses
came running, and the women were hustled back into line. The tramp
of feet started again, and soon the landings were empty and silent,
except for the banging of doors and the rattle of keys in locks. The
entire incident had taken less than three minutes.

Prior's wardress came back. 'That's a relief,' he said. 'I was beginning
to feel like a pork chop in a famine.'

This did not go down well. 'Roper's on the top landing,' she said.

Their boots clanged on the stairs. Looking down now at the empty
landings, Prior was puzzled by a sense of familiarity that he couldn't


247
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


place. Then he remembered. It was like the trenches. No Man's Land      jk,

seen through a periscope, an apparently empty landscape which in fact   IB

held thousands of men. That misleading emptiness had always struck      J|

him as uncanny. Even now, as he tramped along the third landing, he
felt the prickle of hair in the nape of his neck.

The wardress stopped outside No. 39. She bent and peered through
the peephole before unlocking the door. 'Here you are,' she said. 'I'm
afraid I'll have to lock you in. When you're finished just bang on the
door. I'll be along at the end. Good loud bang, mind.' She hesitated.
'She's been on hunger strike. You'll find her quite weak.'

He followed the wardress into the room. It seemed very dark, though
a small, high, barred window set into the far wall let in a shaft of light.
The reflection of the bars was black on the floor, then suddenly faded,
as a wisp of cloud drifted across the sun. As his eyes became accustomed
to the dark, he saw a grey figure huddled on the plank bed, one skinny
arm thrown across its face. Apart from the bed, the only other furnishing
was a bucket, smelling powerfully of urine and faeces.

'Roper?'

The figure on the bed neither moved nor spoke.

'This is Lieutenant Prior. He's come to talk to you.'

Still no response. For a moment he thought she was dead, and he'd
arrived too late. He said, T'm from the Ministry of Munitions.'

Her face remained hidden. 'Then you'd better bugger off back
there, then, hadn't you?'

The wardress clicked her tongue. 'I'll leave you to it,' she said. She
glanced round the bare cell. 'Do you want a chair?'

'No, I can manage.'

'He'll not be stopping long enough to need a chair.'

The door banged shut. He listened for the sound of retreating footsteps.
He walked closer to the bed. 'You know, if you cooperate,
there could be a chance of remission.'

Silence.

'That's if you give us the information we need.'

Her eyes stayed shut. 'I've told you once already. Bugger off back to
London you greasy, arse-licking little sod.'

At last he heard the clump of boots on the landing. 'Prison hasn't
done much for your language has it, Beattie?'

Her eyes opened. He moved so that the light from the window fell
directly on to his face.

'Billy?'


248
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


He went closer. She looked him up and down, even touched his
sleeve, while a whole army of conflicting emotions fought for possession of her 
face. She settled for the simplest. Hatred of the uniform.
'Your dad must be turning in his grave.'

'Well, I expect he would be if he was in it. He isn't, he's alive and
kicking. My mother, mainly.' She'd never liked him to talk about his
father's treatment of his mother. Now, with that remark, they were
back in Tite Street, in the room behind the shop, beef stew and dumplings
simmering on the stove, Hettie peering into the mirror above the
mantelpiece, tweaking curls on to her forehead. Before the sense of
intimacy could be lost, he went and sat on the end of her bed, and she
shifted a little to make room for him. 'You'll never guess what I've just 
seen,' he said in the same gossipy tone, and lifted an imaginary
smock above his head.

Her face lit up with amusement. 'Mad Mary,' she said. 'Eeh, dear
me, everybody sees that, chaplain, governor. I says, "Put it away,
Mary, it's going bald." But you can't reason with her, she's away to
the woods is that one, but you'd be surprised how many are. There's
women in here should never'Ve been sent to prison. They need help.
Hey, and we've had a countess, an Irish rebel, I met her in the yard.
She says, "You're the woman who tried to kill Lloyd George. Let me
shake your hand." I says, "Well, it's very kind of you, love, but I
didn't.'"

'Didn't you?'

"Course I bloody didn't.' She stared at him. 'Did I try to kill Lloyd
George by sticking a curare-tipped blowdart in his arse? No. I. did.
not. Now if you're asking, "Suppose you had a curare-tipped blowdart
and Lloyd George's arse was just here, would you stick it in?" 'course I
bloody would, because there'll be no peace while that bugger's in
power.'

Prior shook his head. 'You can't fasten it on to one person like that.'

'Can't you? / can.'

'I don't see how you can derive that from a Marxist analysis.'

'Bugger Marxist analysis, I hate the sod.'

He waited. 'Enough to kill him?'

'Yes, enough to kill him! And I wouldn't feel guilty about it either.
Any more than he feels guilty about the millions and millions of
young lives he's chucked away.' She fell back, her mouth working.
I'm not your milk-and-water, creeping Jesus sort of pacifist.'

'It might've been better if you hadn't said all that in court.'


249
THE I! YE IN THE DOOR


'I told the truth in court. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.' She laughed. 'Bloody fatal, that was. Do you know, Billy,
I've seen the time I could con anybody into anything, when I was a
young woman. Now they ask me a simple question and the truth
pours out.' She shook her head. 'It's mixing with bloody Quakers,
that's what's done it. Good Christian company's been the ruin of me.'

'So you didn't plan to kill him?'

'The poison was for the dogs.'

She hitched herself up the bed and propped her head against the
wall. It was possible in this position to see how emaciated she was, how
waxy her skin. Her hair, which had been brown the last time he saw
her, was now almost entirely white. Thin strands escaped from the bun
at the back of her head and straggled about her neck. He started to
speak, but she interrupted him. 'What are you here for, Billy?'

'To help you.'

She smiled. 'So what was all that about information?'

'I had to say that. She was listening.'

'But you are from the Ministry of Munitions?'

' 'Course I am. How do you think I got in? Doesn't mean I'm here
for information, does it?' He leant forward. 'Think about it, Beattie.
What information have you got?'

She bridled. 'You'd be surprised. People coming in and out.' Then
she pulled a face. 'Actually, there's not that many politicals in here.
They're all on about their fannies. You lose patience.'

'I want you to tell me what happened.'

'You mean you don't know?'

'I haven't got a transcript of the trial.'

'Haven't you? You do surprise me. Why don't you go and talk to
Spragge?'

'I will. I want your version first, because I haven't heard your
version.' He waited. 'Look, Beattie, whatever damage was done was
done at the trial. I'm not asking you to name any names that didn't
come out then.'

She brooded for a moment. 'You know Tommy Blenkinsop's
dead?'

'Tommy --'

'The deserter I had stopping with me. Hettie had gone away to live,
you know, she was teaching over at Middleton, so I had this spare
room, and I said I'd put Tommy up. Eeh, poor little Tommy, eleven
kids, and do you know to look at him you wouldn't've thought he had


250
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


a fuck in him? He says to me, "You know, Beattie, I only joined up
for a bit of peace." Poor lad. Anyway, that night we were sat over the
fire, Tommy and me, and there was this knock on the door, and I says
to Tommy, "You go on upstairs, love." I answered it and there was
. . .' She sighed, looking into the distance. 'Spragge. Rain pouring off
him, it was a terrible night. And he said he had a letter from Mac, so of
course I asked him to come in. I've had time to think since then. It was Mac he 
was after. He was the big fish, we just got caught in the net.
And the letter was genuine enough, he'd took Mac in as well as me, so
he must've been convincing, mustn't he? Anyway, he explained he
was on his way to Liverpool, and he says, "Can you put me up?" and I
says, "Well, no, not really." And then I thought, we-ell, and I says,
"Unless you don't mind sharing a bed," and I told him about Tommy.
"Is he of the homogenic persuasion?" he says. Well, I just looked at
him. I says, "No, I shouldn't think so, he's got eleven kids, do you
want the bed or not?" So he decided he was stopping and we sat down
round the table, and after a while he notices the photograph of our
William on the mantelpiece. I don't know whether he knew about our
William, I think he must've done, though, because he kept bringing
the conversation round, and saying what a fine lad he was and all that.
And you know I was worried sick about our William, because I knew
what was going on, you see, he'd managed to get a letter smuggled
out.'

'What was going on?'

'Well. You sec, William didn't get exemption. He . . . Partly he was
unlucky with the Board, but you know they don't like moral objectors
anyway. If you're religious -- doesn't matter how batty it is -- you can
say you've got the Holy Spirit in a jamjar on the mantelpiece - that's
all right, that's^iMe. If you say, "I think it's morally wrong for young
men to be sent out to slaughter each other," God help you. The
Chairman of the Board actually said to our William, "You can't be a 
conscientious objector because you don't believe in God, and people
who don't believe in God don't have consciences." That was the level
of it. Anyway, if you're refused exemption you get handed over to the
army. The military police show up and take you off to the barracks
and you get given your first order, generally, "Get stripped off and put
the uniform on." And of course the lads refuse, and then it's the
detention centre. Our William was sent to Wandsworth, and it was
really tough. He was stripped and put in a cell with a stone floor and
no glass in the window -- this is January, mind -- and then, he says, they


251
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


just put a uniform beside you and they wait to sec how long it'll take
you to give in. Of course I was worried sick, I thought he was going to J

get pneumonia, but actually he said in his letter it wasn't the cold that       
'

bothered him, it was being watched all the time. The eye in the door.'
She laughed. 'I didn't know what he meant.'

She looked past Prior's shoulder, and he turned to follow her gaze.
He found himself looking at an elaborately painted eye. The peephole
formed the pupil, but around this someone had taken the time and
trouble to paint a veined iris, an eyewhite, eyelashes and a lid. This eye,
where no eye should have been, was deeply disturbing to Prior. For a
moment he was back in France, looking at Towers's eyeball in the
palm of his hand. He blinked the image away. 'That's horrible,' he
said, turning back to Beattie.

' 'S not so bad long as it stays in the door.' She tapped the side of her
head. 'You start worrying when it gets in here.'

'Anyway, go on. He was talking about William.'

'Yes, he kept bringing the conversation round, and of course I was
worried, and out it all came. It wasn't just our William that was
bothering me, it was all of them.'

'All the conchies?'

'You know I don't mean that.'

No, he thought. She was one of those who felt every death. She'd
never learnt to read the casualty lists over breakfast and then go off and
have a perfectly pleasant day, as the vast majority of civilians did. If she
had learnt to do that, she mightn't have been here. 'Go on,' he said.

'He could see I was getting upset and he says, "Why don't we have a
drink?" Well, money was a bit tight, you know, with feeding Tommy
as well, but he says, "Don't you worry, love, this one's on me." And
he went into the scullery and came back with two bloody great big
jugs, and off he went. Eeh, special brew. Well, you know me, Billy,
two glasses of that, he was me long-lost brother, and I did, I talked, I
played me mouth. I cussed Lloyd George, I cussed the King, I don't
know what bugger I didn't cuss, but I was lonely, Billy. I'd had nobody
to talk to except Tommy for months, and he was no company, poor
little bugger, his nerves were gone. And of course at the trial it all got
twisted. He said I kept dropping hints Lloyd George was going to die.
I can remember exactly what I said. I says, "That bloody, buggering
bastard Lloyd George, he's got a head on him like a forty-shilling
pisspot, but you mark my words he'll come to rue." There. That was
it. That was the death threat.' She shook her head. 'It was nowt of the


252
THF EYE IN THE DOOR


sort. Anyway we were halfway down the second jug -- or I was -- and
he says, "Can I trust you?" I says, "Well, you're in a pretty pickle if
you can't." And then he starts telling me about this detention centre
where the regime was very bad. Worse than Wandsworth. And you
know all the stuff he was telling me was stuff 7'd told him, about being
naked in the cells and all that, but I was too daft to see it. And then he
says, him and some of his mates had found a way to get the lads out.
They had a contact inside the centre, one of the guards it was supposed
to be. But, he says, the problem was the dogs. They had these dogs
patrolling the perimeter fence. I says, "Well, poison." He says, well,
yes, but there was a problem about that. It had to look like an outside
job because of the guard. You see, they didn't want the detention
centre to twig about him. So I says, "Curare."'

'Fired through the fence in a blowdart?'

'Yes.'

'Fired at the dogs?'

'Yes.'

'Of course,' Prior said, 'you do realize, don't you, a lot of people
wouldn't know about curare?'

For the first time she looked uneasy. 'Yes, well, I read about it in a
book on South America, and then I happened to mention it to Alf-- our Winnie's 
husband - and he says, "Oh, yes, we've got some of that
in the lab." That's the only way I knew about it.'

'No previous thoughts of killing Lloyd George? They said at the
trial you'd plotted to kill him before, when you were in the
suffragettes.'

'The suffragettes never threatened human life. That was a point of
honour: property, not life. It just shows Spragge's ignorance, does
that. Couldn't even think up a convincing lie.'

'He seems to have convinced the jury.'

'You know what was going on there as well as I do. You put a
pacifist - any pacifist - in the dock - could be Jesus Christ - and the
biggest rogue unhung in the witness-box, and who do you think
they're gunna believe?'

'What did he say when you mentioned curare?'

'He says, yes, but how on earth was he going to get his hands on
that? I says I knew where to get it, but it was too risky. And then he
says if I helped him, he'd help me. He'd get little Tommy across to
Ireland, and that clinched it for me, because you know Tommy was
getting really weird. I mean, to be honest, I thought if I didn't get him


253
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


out I was gunna have a loony 011 me hands, like Lily Braithwaitc's
husband. You know what a state he was in when he come back.'

'So you agreed to get the curare?'

'Yes, he give me an address and told me to write to him when I got
it. I wrote to our Winnie's Alf, and he mentioned dogs in his letter
back to me, but that letter was never produced, I think it slipped down
a crack in the pavement. And Alf said, yes, he'd get it. He works in a
big medical laboratory, and he had to sign for the poison. But he
wasn't worried, see, because the dogs'd be dying at the other end of the
country and nobody would make the connection. But can you imagine
him signing his name like that if he'd thought it was for Lloyd
George?'

'Then what?'

'I waited. The post seemed to take such a long time, but of course
unbeknownst to us all the letters were being opened. The parcel was
opened. And then when it was finally delivered the police were on the
doorstep in a matter of minutes. And I was charged with conspiracy to
murder Lloyd George, and others. That's the other thing they dropped.
It wasn't just Lloyd George they were on about. To begin with it was hundreds 
of people I was supposed to be plotting to kill. And, of course,
all I could say was, "The poison was for the dogs," but I couldn't
prove it, it was Spragge's word against mine, and he was working for
the bloody Ministry of Munitions. Oh, and the trial. You know he
read all the letters out in court?'

'Smith did?'

'Yeh, Smith. The Attorney-General. Oh, I was honoured, they
wheeled out all the big guns. And he read me letters out in court,
about Winnie's period being late and all that. And you know he read
the words the way I'd wrote them. Just to get a laugh out of me,
because I can't spell, I never have been able to. But I wonder how
good his spelling'd be, if he'd left school when he was eight?'

'He shouldn't've done that.'

'I was fair game. Language too. He couldn't get over the language,
this dreadful, coarse, lewd, vulgar, low woman who kept using all
these words his dear little wifie didn't even know. /'// bet.'

Prior sat back against the wall. He was finding the eye in the door
difficult to cope with. Facing it was intolerable, because you could
never be sure if there were a human eye at the centre of the painted
eye. Sitting with his back to it was worse, since there's nothing more
alarming than being watched from behind. And when he sat sideways,


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he had the irritating impression of somebody perpetually trying to
attract his attention. It tired him, and if it tired him after less than an
hour, what must it have done to Beattie, who'd had to endure it for
over a year? He noticed that the latrine bucket had been placed where
it could be seen from the door. 'Why's the bucket there?' he asked.
'Because some poor bloody cow drowned herself in her own piss.'
'My God.' He stared at her. 'You're not as bad as that, are you?'
'No, I keep going. Trouble is, you're punished if you go on hunger
strike, so I can't have any visitors. I haven't seen our Hettie for . . . oh,
I don't know, it must be two months.' Till see what I can do.'

'That's what Spragge said. When I told him about not being able to
get Tommy across to Ireland, he says, "I'll see what 1 can do." '
'The difference is I'm not asking for anything back.'
She touched his sleeve. 'We were close once, Billy. You were like a
son to me.' She waited. Tm not going to ask whose side you're on
because you mightn't tell me the truth, and if you did, I wouldn't
believe you. But just tell me this. Do you know whose side you're on?'
He looked at her and smiled, but didn't reply.


FOUR


The Ministry of Munitions was housed in the Hotel Metropole. The
reception desk, now guarded by armed police, had once been manned
by smooth-faced young men, trained not to look surprised when the
sixth couple in succession turned out to be called Smith, or when
prosperous-looking gentlemen, entertaining their curiously
unprosperous-looking nephews, requested a double room. No such
innocent frolics now, Prior thought, crossing the foyer. Goodness how
the moral tone had declined.

On the third floor he tapped on Major Lode's door. Lode looked up
from the file he was reading, dabbing, as he always did when confronted
by a new situation, at the outer corners of his large, silky, red
gold moustache. In defiance of biology, Prior saw this moustache as a feminine 
adornment: perhaps because it seemed to require so much
protection from the outside world.


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THE EYE IN THE DO OK

'How did it go?' Lode asked.

'Quite well, I think. She was . . . fairly hostile to begin with, but I
think towards the end she was starting to open up.'

'Did you mention MacDowell?'

'Only in passing. I thought it better not to ... focus on him.'

'Hmm, yes, quite right. So what's the next step?'

'I'd like to see Hettie Roper. The younger daughter. You remember
she was walking out with MacDowell?'

Lode smiled. 'Walking out? Yes. I was just thinking, what a quaint
expression. But I thought that was over? That's what she told the
police.'

'I don't believe it. They were too close.'

'Yes, well, do what you need to do. Good.'

And now, Prior thought, closing the door quietly behind him, you
can fumigate your fucking office. 'What a quaint expression.' I could
buy and sell you, he told the closed door. Lode had no idea. He'd spent
his entire adult life - boyhood too, for that matter - in uniformed,
disciplined, hierarchical institutions, and he simply couldn't conceive
of the possibility that other people might function differently. It was
all a great big chessboard to him. This rag-bag collection of Quakers,
socialists, anarchists, suffragettes, syndicalists, Seventh Day Adventists
and God knows who else was merely an elaborate disguise, behind
which lurked the real anti-war movement, a secret, disciplined, highly
efficient organization dedicated to the overthrow of the state as surely
and simply as Lode was dedicated to its preservation. And on the other
side of the board, at the head of the opposing army, elusive, tenacious,
dangerous: the Black King himself, Patrick MacDowell. It wasn't complete
nonsense, of course. Mac was certainly a more effective opponent
of the war than most, if only because he was not in love with suffering.
Poor Mac, he'd had enough of that by the time he was ten.

Prior walked down the corridor to his own room, tiny in comparison
with Lode's, hardly more than a cupboard. Evidently, in pre-war days
this room had been reserved for those obliged to sin on a budget. He
felt dirty, physically dirty, after the long train journey, and when he
looked into the small glass above the washbasin he saw that his face
was covered in smuts. He washed as much of himself as he could reach
without undressing, and then began searching through the filing cabinet.
He'd made a list of a number of files that contained reports from
Lionel Spragge, and it took him only a few moments to gather them
together and dump them on his desk. He had an hour to read through


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


them before Spraggc arrived. Spraggc had been reluctant to conic to
the Ministry at all, suggesting they should meet outside, at some pub
or other, but Prior had wanted this first meeting to be on his own
ground.

C5

He'd read the reports several times already, so it was merely a matter of 
refreshing his memory. When he came to Beattie's file, to Spragge's
reports on the Roper affair and then to his deposition, he read more
slowly. After a while he looked up, puzzled by the sense of something
unfamiliar in the room. He stared round him, but could see nothing
different, and then he realized that the change was in himself. He had
not been angry until now.


LIONEL ARTHUR MORTIMER SPRAGGE

on his oath saith as follows:


2 February 1917. I am employed at the Ministry of Munitions. I entered the
employ of the Ministry on i July 1916. I have been engaged making certain
inquiries concerning various organizations amongst others the Independent
Labour Party and the No Conscription fellowship. I reported to Major
Lode. He was the officer from whom I chiefly got my directions.

Between October and December 1916 I was sent to Liverpool to make
inquiries concerning one Patrick MacDowell. He had been the leading
organizer of the Sheffield strike in the Munitions factories. I told MacDowell
I wanted to go to the Manchester area. MacDowell gave me a letter to give
to Mrs Beatrice Roper. On the night of I think the 23rd December I went to
Mrs Roper's shop, at 11 Tite Street, Salford, and gave her the letter. After
reading the letter Mrs Roper agreed that I could stay with her and we shook
hands very heartily indeed. She sat at one end of the table, and I sat next to
her. There was another man staying in the house at the time who was
introduced to me as Tommy Blenkinsop, a deserter. He did not come
downstairs until later. Mrs Roper asked me about myself. I told her I had
been refused exemption and that I had been on the run since September as a
moral objector. I told her about being locked up in a detention centre and I
think I told her something of the treatment I had received there. At that she
said, 'That is just like my William,' and she got up and fetched a photograph
from the dresser. It was a small photograph of her son, William Roper. As
she was showing me the photograph she told me that before the war she had
been active in the suffragettes and that she had burnt down a church. I think
her exact words were, 'You know about St Michael's? We were nearly
copped, but we bloody well did it.' She laughed and said, 'You should have
seen the flames go up.' She then said, 'And that was not all we did.' She told


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


me she had been party to a plan to kill Mr Lloyd George, by inserting a
curare-tipped nail through the sole of his boot in such a way that it would
pierce the skin when he put his weight on the foot, causing instant lassitude
followed by seizures. They had been planning to do this on the Isle of Wight
where Mr Lloyd George was staying at that time. There was a waiter in his
hotel sympathetic to the suffragette cause. I do not recollect the name of the
hotel, or of the waiter. I asked her why the attempt had not succeeded. She
replied, 'The bloody, shitting, buggering old sod pissed off to France, didn't
he?' Mrs Roper's language was fairly good most of the time but when she
spoke of Mr Lloyd George she used bad language. I then made diligent
inquiries as to the nature of Mrs Roper's attitude to Mr Lloyd George. She
several times expressed the opinion that he ought to be killed. I then asked
her whether there was anybody else who ought to be killed and she replied,
'Yes, the other George, that poncing old git in the Palace, he'd not be
missed.'

I then asked her whether this was all talk or whether some plan was afoot.
She replied, 'Can I trust you?' I think I said something to the effect that she
was in a pretty pickle if she could not. She then said that she knew where to
get curare and that Walton Heath Golf-course would be a good place to get
Mr Lloyd George with an air-gun. She said she knew three good lads in
London who would do the job. She then asked me if I wanted to be in on it
and I considered it my duty to reply in the affirmative in order to procure
further information. I passed that night at Mrs Roper's house, and the
following morning I reported back to Major Lode's department in code.


Spragge was a big, fleshy, floridly handsome man, with thick brows
and startling blue-green eyes that slanted down at the outer corners.
His neck and jowls had thickened, and rose from his broad shoulders
in a single column. Hair sprouted from his ears, his nostrils, the cuffs of
his shirt. He was as unmistakably and crudely potent as a goat. Beattie
would have gone for him, Prior thought, as he stood up to shake
hands. He wondered how he knew that, and why he should mind as
much as he did.

'I asked you to come in,' Prior said, after Spragge had settled into his
chair, 'because we're thinking of employing you again.' He watched
the flare of hope. Spragge was less well turned out than he appeared to
be at first sight. His suit was shiny with wear, his shirt cuffs frayed.
'You'll have gathered from the papers there's a lot of unrest in the
munitions industry at 'the moment. Particularly in the north, where
you spent a good deal of time, didn't you? In '16.'

258


I
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Yes, I '

'With MacDowell. Who'd just come out of a detention centre, I
believe?'

'Yes, he's a deserter. Conchie. You should see the size of him, for
God's sake. Built like a brick shithouse. See some of the scraggy little
buggers that get sent to France.' Spragge was looking distinctly nervous.
'I don't think I could approach him again. I mean, he knows me.'

'He knows you from the Roper case, doesn't he?'

'Before that.'

'You might be able to give advice, though. Obviously we'd need to
keep you away from the areas you were working in before.'

Spragge looked relieved.

'You met MacDowell in the summer of'16? In Sheffield?'

'Yes, I was making inquiries into the shop stewards' movement.'

Prior made a show of consulting his notes. 'You stayed with Edward
Carpenter?'

'I did.' Spragge leant forward, his florid face shining with sweat, and
said in a sinister whisper, 'Carpenter is of the homogenic persuasion.'

'So I believe.' That phrase again. It had stuck in Beattie's memory,
and no wonder. It was transparently obvious that Spragge's natural
turn of phrase would have been something like 'fucking brown 'atter'.
'Of the homogenic persuasion' was Major Lode. Who had once told
Prior in, of all places, the Cafe Royal, 'This country is being brought
to its knees. Not by Germany' - here he'd thumped the table so hard
that plates and cutlery had leapt into the air - 'NOT BY GERMANY,
but by an unholy alliance of socialists, sodomites and shop stewards.'
Prior had felt scarcely able to comment, never having been a shop
steward. 'Do you think that's relevant?'

'It was relevant to me. There was no lock on the door.'

'He is eighty, isn't he?' said Prior.

Spragge shifted inside his jacket. 'A vigorous eighty.'

'You went to a meeting, next day? Addressed by Carpenter.'

'I went with Carpenter.'

'And in the course of his speech he quoted a number of ... well,
what would you call them? Songs? Poems? In praise of homogenic
love.'

'He did. In public.'

'Well, it was a public meeting, wasn't it? And then after the meeting
you went into a smaller room, and there you were introduced to a
number of people, including the author of these songs?'


259

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Yes.'

'Walt Whitman.'

'Yes.'

'Walt Whitman is an American poet.' Prior waited for Spragge's
mouth to open. 'A dead American poet.'

'He didn't look well.'

'1819 to 1892.'

Spragge jerked his head. 'Yeh, well, it's the money, innit?'

'Is it?'

'I'll say it is. Two pound ten a week I was promised. Mind you, he
says the information's got to be good and you've got to keep it coming.'
Spragge sat back and snorted. 'Didn't matter how good it was, I never
had two pound ten in my hand, not regular, just like that. Bonuses,
yes. But what use are dribs and drabs like that to me? I'm a family
man.'

'You got bonuses, did you?'

'Now and then.'

'That would be if you turned up something special?'

Spragge hesitated. 'Yes.'

'How big a bonus did you get for Beattie Roper?'

Spragge hesitated again, then clearly decided he had nothing to lose.
'Not big enough.'

'But you got one?'

'Yes.'

'All in one go?'

'Half on arrest, half on conviction.'

'You got a bonus if she was convicted?'

'Look, I know what you're after. You're saying I lied under oath. Well,
I didn't. Do you think I'm gunna risk -- what is it, five years -- for a measly
fifty quid? 'Course I'm bloody not. I'd have to be mad, wouldn't I?'

'Or in debt.'

Spragge blinked. 'Just because I lied about Walt Whitman doesn't
mean I was lying all the time. That was the first report I wrote, I was
desperate to get enough in.'

'You never talked about dogs to Mrs Roper?'

Spragge made an impatient gesture. 'What dogs? There weren't any
fucking dogs. They're not used in detention centres. You might not
know that, but she does. She's talked to men who've been in every
detention centre in England. She knows there aren't any dogs.' He
stared at Prior. 'Have you been talking to her?'


260

I
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'I've interviewed her, yes.'

Spragge snorted. 'Well, all I can say is the old bitch's got you
properly conned.'

'I haven't said I believed her.'

'She was convicted. It doesn't matter what you believe.'

'It matters a great deal, from the point of view of your job prospects.'
Prior gave this time to sink in. 'The letter that came with the poison.
From Mrs Roper's son-in-law.' He drew the file towards him. ' "If
you get close enough to the poor brutes, I pity them. Dead in twenty
seconds."'

'All that proves is that the son-in-law thought it was for the dogs.
Well, she'd have to tell him something, wouldn't she?'

'You still say she plotted to kill Lloyd George?'

'Yes.'

'And that the suggestion came from her, and not from you?'

'Yes. She didn't need any bloody encouragement!'

'Even to the details? Even to suggesting Walton Heath Golf-course
as a good place to do it?'

'That's right.'

'How would she know that? She's spent her entire life in the back
streets of Salford, how would she know where Lloyd George plays
golf?'

Spragge shrugged. 'Read it in the paper? I don't suppose it's a state
secret.' He leant forward. 'You know, you want to be careful. If
you're saying I acted as an agent provocateur -- and that is what you're
saying, isn't it? -- then you're also saying that Major Lode employed an agent 
provocateur. Either knowingly, in which case he's a rogue, or
unknowingly, in which case he's a fool. Either way, it's not gunna do his 
career much good, is it? You watch yourself. You might find out
it's your head on the chopping-block.'

Prior spread his hands. 'Who's talking about chopping-blocks? I'm
interviewing a new agent -- new to me. And I've made it clear -- at least
I hope I've made it clear -- that any little flight of fancy -- Walt Whitman
rising from the dead - and I'll be on to it. If there aren't any flights of
fancy, well then ... no need to worry.' With the air of a man getting
to the real purpose of the meeting at last, Prior drew another file
towards him. 'Now tell me what you know about MacDowell.'

After he'd finished milking Spragge of information, all of which he
knew already, and had sent him home to await the summons, Prior sat
motionless for a while, his chin propped on his hands.


261
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'The poison was for the dogs.'

'There weren't any fucking dogs. You might not know that, but she does.'

Was it possible Beattie had tried to reach out from her corner shop
in Tite Street and kill the Prime Minister? The Beattie he'd known
before the war would not have done that, but then that Bcattie had
been rooted in a communal life. Oh, she'd been considered odd -- any
woman in Tite Street who worked for the suffragettes was odd. But
she hadn't been isolated. That came with the war.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Miss Burton's little dog had gone
missing. Miss Burton was a spinster who haunted the parish church,
arranged flowers, sorted jumble, cherished a hopeless love for the vicar
-- how hopeless probably only Prior knew. He'd been at home at the
time, waiting for orders to join his regiment, and he'd helped her
search for the dog. They found it tied by a wire to the railway fence, in
a buzzing cloud of black flies, disembowelled. It was a dachshund. One
of the enemy.

In that climate Beattie had found the courage to be a pacifist. People
stopped going to the shop. If it hadn't been for the allotment, the
family would have starved. So many bricks came through the window
they gave up having it mended and lived behind boards. Shit -- canine
and human -- regularly plopped through the letter-box on to the
carpet. In that isolation, in that semi-darkness, Beattie had sheltered
deserters and later, after the passing of the Conscription Act, conscientious
objectors who'd been refused exemption. Until one day, carrying
a letter from Mac, Spragge had knocked on her door and uncovered a
plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. Or so he said.

Could she have plotted to kill Lloyd George? Prior thought he
understood how the powerless might begin to fancy themselves omnipotent.
The badges of hopeless drudgery, the brush and the cooking
pot, become the flying broomstick and the cauldron, and not only in the
minds of the persecutors. At first there would be only wild and flailing
words, prophecies that Lloyd George would come to a dreadful end
and then, nudged along by Spragge -- because whatever Beattie's part
in this, Spragge had not been innocent -- the sudden determination to
act out the fantasy, to destroy the man she blamed for prolonging the
war and causing millions of deaths.

Lode would have had no difficulty in believing Spragge. The poison
plot fitted in very neatly with his preconceptions about the antiwar
movement. Not much grasp of reality in all this, Prior thought, on
either side. He was used to thinking of politics in terms of conflicting


262
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


interests, but what seemed to have happened here was less a conflict of
interests than a disastrous meshing together of fantasies.

He began putting away the files. It was a situation where you had to
hang on to the few certainties, and he was certain that Spragge had lied
under oath, and since Spragge had been the only witness, this of itself
meant the conviction was unsafe.

He locked the filing cabinet and the door of his room, and walked
along to the end of the corridor. The lift was stuck on the fifth floor.
He decided not to wait and ran downstairs, coming out on to the
mezzanine landing where he paused and looked down into the foyer,
as he often did, liking to imagine the hotel as it must have been before
the war, before this drabncss of black and khaki set in.

The shape of a head caught his attention. Charles Manning, waiting
for the lift, and with him - good God - Winston Churchill and
Edward Marsh. Prior watched. Manning, though obviously junior,
seemed perfectly at ease in their company. Certainly he was not merely
dancing attendance; there was a good deal of shared laughter, and, as
they moved into the lift, Marsh's hand rested briefly on his shoulder.
Well, well, well, Prior thought, continuing on his way downstairs.
'Connections' indeed!


Prior lived in a seedy basement flat in Bayswater. He could have
afforded better, but he preferred to spend his money on properly
tailored uniforms, and these did not come cheap. His bedroom had
french windows that opened on to a small high-walled yard, so dark
that he had never been tempted to sit out, though his landlady had
made an effort. The walls were painted cream to a height of about ten
feet, and there were a number of thin, straggly plants dying in a great
variety of containers.

The room was small and L-shaped. His bed lay along the upright of
the L, facing the window, with a desk and hard chair at the foot. The
baseline of the L contained a wardrobe, with an oval mirror set into
the door. There was space for nothing else.

The bathroom was next door. He had a tepid bath, and then,
wrapped in his dressing-gown, lay on the bed and lit a cigarette. He
was too tired to think constructively, and yet his mind whirred on.
This was the frame of mind that led to a bad night, and it irritated him,
almost to the point of tears, that he could do nothing about it.

He thought of Beattie in her cell. Eighteen months since Lionel
Spragge knocked on her door. Eighteen months ago he'd been in


263
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France. Eighteen months ago William Roper had been m Wandsworth
Detention Centre. An image of William began to form in Prior's
mind, tiny but powerful, like the initial letter of a gospel. William,
naked in his cell, watched constantly through the eye in the door, and
beside him, on the stone floor, the uniform he'd refused to put on. A
small, high, barred window, lit with a bluish glow from the snow
outside.

He found himself resenting the power of this image. The claim it
made on his sympathy. Deliberately, he entered the cell and then let
himself drift out of the window, between the bars, into the falling
snow. He was in France now, lying out in the open with his platoon.
The trenches had been blown flat, there was no shelter from the icy
wind, no hope of getting the wounded back. And no water, because
the water in the water-bottles had frozen. Once a hawk flew over,
its shadow black against the snow. The only movement, the only
life, in a landscape dead as the moon. Hour after hour of silence,
and the snow falling. Then, abruptly, Sanderson's convulsed and
screaming face, as they cut the puttees away from his frostbitten
legs.

This was no use. Prior sat up and started reading The Times, but the
print blurred and Beattie's face took its place, the white hair straggling
round her neck. He closed his eyes. The bell of the shop in Tite Street
rang as he pushed the door open. How old? Four? Five? A smell of cat
pee and tarred string from the bundles of firewood in the corner.
Beattie's cat had never been able to resist marking those bundles. Mrs
Thorpe plonked their Alfie on the counter while she paid her bill. Alfie
swung his short legs in their sturdy boots, puffing away at a fag end,
though he was only three. Between drags, he sucked his mother's
breast, puffing and sucking alternately, peering round the white curve
at Prior, who was a Big Boy and therefore an object of interest and
suspicion. It was late in the afternoon. Mrs Thorpe would be far gone.
Jugs of best bitter were her favourite, chased down by sips of something
medicinal that she kept in a flask fastened to her thigh with a homemade
elastic garter. Whisky for the heart, brandy for the lungs, gin for
the bladder. Alfie, guzzling away at his mother's milk, looked contented,
and well he might, since it could hardly have been less than 70
proof.

The past is a palimpsest, Prior thought. Early memories are always
obscured by accumulations of later knowledge. He made himself walk
to the counter again, this time remembering nothing but the moment,


264
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push his sweaty com across the cool marble, and ask, 'What can I have
for a ha'penny?'

There was a white apron round Beattie's waist with two pockets,
stained black from the coins inside them. These coins smelled very
strong when she emptied them on to the table to count them, a dark,
dank, heavy smell.

'What can I have for a ha'penny?'

Beattie's voice, patient as if she hadn't said all this a million times
before, reeled off the list: aniseed ball, sherbet delight, liquorice stick,
a packet of thousand-and-ones, and finally -- his favourite because it
lasted so long - a gob-stopper.

Towers's eye lay in the palm of his hand. 'What am I supposed to do with
this gob-stopper?' Logan's hand reached out, grasped his shaking wrist, and
tipped the eye into the bag.

Don't think about it, he told himself. It was too late in the day to risk
thinking about that.

He had no memory of Beattie's face. She'd been an object then, a
mountain, the side of a house, vast, taken for granted, not a person to
whom you could attach adjectives. Though he could attach them
readily enough now: lively, opinionated, intelligent, uneducated, foul
mouthed, impulsive, generous, quick-tempered, kind. Prior's mother,
his gentle and, it had to be said, genteel mother, hated Beattie Roper,
though, when his mother became ill with suspected tuberculosis, it was
to Beattie he'd been sent. That must have been his father's decision.

For almost a year, when he was five or six years old, he'd lived with
Beattie and played with her two daughters, Winnie, who was now in
Leeds Prison, and Hettie, who'd been charged with conspiracy to
murder, but acquitted. He'd been the baby, when they played houses;
the customer, when they played shops; the pupil, when they played
schools; the patient,' when they played nurses; and all these roles had
been extremely boring, except, now and then, the role of patient.

They'd played under the big table in the kitchen, because its green
tasselled cloth hanging down all round them made a separate world.
Particularly on wash days, when the house was invaded by smells of
soda, Dolly Blue and wet wool, and the wind blew grit in from the
yard, the table was their refuge. Between the green tassels they looked
out at adult boots coming and going, and felt a pleasant sense of
power.

Mr Carker's boots. Mr Carker was secretary of the Independent
Labour Party, and sometimes he and Beattie sat together at the table,


265
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discussing politics. These discussions had been, in every sense, above
Prior's head, though he remembered one remark of Mr Carker's to the effect that 
the suffragettes simply exploited working-class women like
Beattie. 'It's all very well, talking about sisterhood, but when they go
home at night and drop their knickers, it's somebody else's job to pick
them up.'

Probably it was the reference to dropping knickers that had made
that particular remark stick in his mind. Perhaps it excited Mr Carker
too, for shortly afterwards his boot crept along the floor and brushed
against Beattie's foot. She moved her foot. The boot followed, accompanied
this time by a hand on her knee, a hand that just lifted the green
tassels. Prior looked round and saw Hettie's stricken face. It was a
house with no father, and all the children, but particularly Hettie, were
passionate in defence of their mother. For the first time in his life,
perhaps, Prior was aware of another's pain. Stealthily, he reached out
and tied Mr Carker's boot laces together, so that when, finally, he got
up to go, he tripped and measured his full length on the floor.

The disciplining of children must have been the only subject on
which Beattie held no advanced views. She'd hauled him out of his
hiding place, tipped him over her knee and tanned his arse; and he'd
clenched his teeth, divided between a blaze of joy that he was suffering
for Hettie's sake, and regret that the suffering should not have taken a
more dignified form.

Major Lode, interviewing him for his present post, had leant across
the table and said, 'You see, you know these people, don't you?'

Prior took a last drag of his cigarette, leant over the edge of the bed
and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Yes.

He drew the curtains and got inside the sheets. He was afraid to go
to sleep, but he had learnt, from long experience, that to keep himself
awake at night only to fall asleep shortly before dawn made for the
worst nightmares of all. He lay and stared at the ceiling, unblinking,
until his eyelids prickled, then rolled over on to his side and brought
his knees up to his chin.

He was back in the winter landscape, with a sound like wind blowing,
only it was not the wind, but the sound of emptiness. A hawk
flew over and he watched its shadow on the snow. They were marching
back. His boot went through thin ice into freezing mud. The ice
meshed out round his foot, white opaque lines radiating out so that he
stood at the centre of a frozen web.

The cold half woke him. He found his leg outside the covers and
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


brought it back inside, but now his whole body was cold. He was
lying naked on a stone floor. Because his sleep was light, he knew he
was dreaming, and he knew also that he had to wake up before something
worse happened. He turned and saw the eye watching him, an
eye not painted but very much alive. The white glittered in the moonlight.
The same noise of emptiness he'd heard in France had followed
him into the cell. He stared at the eye, and then, by a supreme effort of
will, forced himself to sit up.

Sweating and clammy, he reached down for his cigarettes, and
remembered he'd left them on the desk. He got up and felt his way
along, not wanting to switch on the light because the horror of the
nightmare was heavy on him, and he was afraid of what the glare
might reveal. He was standing by the desk, in the half-darkness, dabbing
his hands among his papers, searching for the cigarette packet, when he
heard a chuckle and spun round. The eye was watching him from the
door. He shrank back against the table, his hands groping behind him
for the paper-knife. His fingers closed round the hilt and he sprang at
the door, stabbing the eye again and again, his naked body spattered
with blood and some thick whitish fluid that did not drip but clung to
his belly, and quickly chilled. Then, exhausted, he slipped to the floor
and lay there, sobbing, and the sound of his sobbing woke him up.

At first he simply stared at the door. Only when he was sure there was
no eye did he start to relax and take in the strangeness of his position. The
fingertips of his right hand patted the cold oilcloth, as if by touching it he
could make it turn into a mattress and sheets. No, he was out of bed,
lying on the floor. Nightmare, he thought, drawing a deep breath. He
started to pull himself up, feeling a wetness in his groin, and, as he did so,
his splayed fingers touched the knife. So that had been real. With a spasm
of revulsion, he struck out at it and sent it skittering across the floor.


FIVE


The aerodrome consisted of two runways and a straggle of low buildings
set in one corner of a field.

Rivers and Dundas got out of the car and stood looking at the sky:
clear, except for one bank of dark cloud away on the horizon.


267
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'Good weather tor it, anyway,' Dundas said.

It was possible to tell he was frightened, but only because Rivers had
been observing him closely for weeks. Dundas suffered from abnormal
reactions in the air. Where healthy pilots experienced no sensation at
all, Dundas reported feeling his head squashed into his body, or a loss
of movement in his legs. He suffered from nausea. More seriously still,
he had more than once experienced the preliminary stages of a faint.
After every physiological test possible had proved negative, he had
been handed over to Rivers for psychological observation. Unfortunately,
Rivers was making no progress. Dundas seemed to be exactly
the sort of cheerful, likable, slightly irresponsible young man he'd
grown accustomed to dealing with in the Royal Flying Corps. Apart
from flying, his main interests were amateur dramatics, music and
girls, not necessarily in that order. He appeared, in fact, to be entirely
normal. Until he got into an aeroplane. And they were here to do just
that.

'We seem to have arrived a bit early,' Dundas said. 'Would you like
a cup of tea?'

The canteen was empty, except for a group of young fliers gathered
round a table in the far corner, most of them in their twenties, one
ginger-haired lad noticeably younger. Dundas went off to get the tea,
and Rivers sat down at a table whose entire surface was covered with
interlocking rings of tea stains. The young men were reading newspapers,
chatting in a desultory fashion about the events of the day: the
massive German advance, Maud Allan's libel action against Pemberton
Billing, the cult of the clitoris. A dark-haired young man held up a
photograph of Maud Allan. 'If she ever fancies anything bigger she's
welcome to knock on my door.'

'She'd not notice the difference,' somebody said.

A good-natured scuffle. Then a new voice: 'Did you hear the one
about Lord Albemarle? Went into the Turf, and said . . .' A desiccated,
aristocratic bleat. ' "Keep reading in the papers about this Greek chap,
Clitoris. Anybody know who he is?"' They all laughed, the younger
lad with braying anguish; it was immediately clear his confusion at
least equalled Lord Albemarle's.

Dundas came back with the tea and two very greasy doughnuts.

'Not for me, thank you,' Rivers said, patting his stomach. 'I have to
be careful.'

Dundas nodded uncomprehendingly. Obviously duodenal ulcers
and having to be careful were a million miles away from his experience.


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He ate both doughnuts with every sign of relish. Rivers sipped his tea
and tried not to think that if Dundas's medical records were anything
to go by (my God, they'd better be!) he could expect to see the
doughnuts again before long.

They didn't talk much. Dundas was too tense, and Rivers respected
his need for silence. When they'd finished, they walked across to the
hangars together. Dundas disappeared inside the first hangar for a
moment and came back carrying flying helmets, jackets and gauntlets.
Rivers put a jacket on and followed Dundas across to the aeroplane.

'Here she is,' Dundas said, patting the fuselage. 'Terrible old bucket.
Can't think why they've given us this one.'

Because it's the one they can best afford to lose, Rivers thought.
He'd intended this reflection as a small private joke, but instead it
brought him face to face with his own fear.

'Right,' Dundas said. 'If you'd like to hop in.'

Rivers climbed into the observer's seat and fastened the harness.
Dundas bent over him to check the buckles. A faint smile acknowledged
the reversal of the usual caring role. 'All right?' he said.

'Fine.'

'You've done a lot of flying, haven't you?'

'I don't know about a lot. Some.'

'But you've done spins and loops and things?'

'Yes.'

Dundas smiled. 'That's all right, then.'

Something about Dundas's smile held Rivers's attention. Suddenly,
he felt certain Dundas was withholding something, even perhaps concealing
it. Not malingering. In fact, rather the reverse. He thought
Dundas might be minimizing his symptoms. It wasn't a good moment
for that particular perception to strike.

Dundas pulled his helmet on, climbed in, exchanged a whole series
of shouts and waves with the mechanics. The engine stuttered, began
to roar, and then they were taxiing away from the hangar.

Rivers looked round him, at hedgerows thick with blossom, a sky
tumultuous with rising larks; then he snapped his goggles into place,
and the splendour contracted to a muddy pond.

He was now definitely afraid. The situation might almost be regarded
as a small experiment, with himself as the subject. The healthy
reaction to fear in a normal human being is the. undertaking of some
manipulative activity designed to avoid or neutralize the danger. Provided
such activity is available, the individual ought to be unaware of


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feeling fear. But no such activity was available. Like every other man
who sits in the observer's seat, he was entirely dependent on his pilot.
And what a pilot. He had long believed that the essential factor in the
production of war neurosis among the two most vulnerable groups,
observers and trench soldiers, was the peculiarly passive, dependent
and immobile nature of their experience. It isn't often that a hypothesis
conceived in the scientist's cortex is confirmed by his gut, but his gut
certainly seemed to be doing its best to prove this one. He bit his lips to
control the pain and concentrated hard on the back of Dundas's head,
at the wisps of reddish-gold hair escaping from beneath the helmet, the
pink neck, the edge of white scarf, the brown leather of his flying
jacket, scuffed and scarred with wear.

'ALL RIGHT?' Dundas yelled.

They had reached their take-off position. The engine raced. Rivers
felt himself pushed hard back against the vibrating seat. The plane
lifted, bumped, lifted again, and then climbed steeply away from the
huddle of buildings.

He looked over the side, shielding his mouth from the wind. The
countryside stretched below them, grey striations of lanes and roads,
the glitter of a pond, great golden swathes of laburnum, a line of
hedgerow white with blossom, blue smoke from a bonfire drifting
across a field of green wheat.

A movement from Dundas brought him back to the task in hand.
Dundas was making a spinning movement with his hand. The comforting
roar of the engine faltered, then became an infuriated mosquito
whine as the plane started to spin. Dundas's eyes were fixed on his
instruments. Rivers watched the sun revolve in a great spiral round the
falling plane. Abruptly, the sun vanished, and the green fields rushed
up to meet them. Dundas pulled on the stick, but something was
wrong. The horizon was tilted. Rivers leant forward and tilted his
hand to the left. Slowly the horizon straightened.

Dundas had lost his sense of the horizontal. Already.

'HOW WAS IT?' Rivers yelled.

Dundas waved his hand in an incomprehensible gesture, then put
one hand on top of his head and pressed repeatedly, indicating he'd felt
his head being squashed into his body. He made the spinning movement
again. Rivers shook his head and made a looping movement. After a
moment's hesitation, Dundas's thumb went up.

The plane banked steeply as Dundas turned and made for the city.
He was not meant to do this, and Rivers guessed he was trying to


270
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make the flight last as long as possible. In a short time he saw beneath
him the sulphurous haze of London. This was the view seen by the
German pilots as they came in on moonlit bombing raids, following
the silver thread of the Thames, counting bridges, watching for the
bulge of the Isle of Dogs.

Rivers tapped Dundas on the shoulder. Dundas turned round and
nodded. So much of his face was hidden by the goggles it was impossible
to read his expression. Rivers sat back and again concentrated on
his own sensations. After the fifth loop he began to feel he was loose in
his seat, a reaction he remembered from other flights and knew to be a
frequent, though not universal, reaction of healthy fliers. They again
came out with one wing down. Dundas leant over the side and retched,
but didn't vomit. Rivers jerked his thumb at the ground, but Dundas
ignored him.

With no idea at all now which manoeuvre to expect, Rivers sat
back and tried to relax as the plane climbed. The vast blue haze of
London fell away beneath the left wing-tip. Higher and colder. Wisps
of cloud hid the sun; columns of shadows flitted rapidly across the city.
Rivers felt calm, suddenly. There were worse ways to die, and he'd
seen most of them.

Again the engine faltered, giving way to the mosquito whine as
the plane began to fall. Dundas came out of the spin, white, giddy,
confused and clearly finding it difficult to focus on his instruments.
Rivers could see him peering at them. He yelled, 'DOWN!' and
jerked his finger at the ground. Dundas leant out of the plane and
was sick.

They had a bumpy landing, though not worse than many others
Rivers had experienced. After the plane had taxied to a halt, Dundas
stayed in his seat for a few moments before jumping down. He staggered
slightly and held on to the wing. Rivers climbed down and
immediately went up to him.

'I'm all right,' Dundas said, letting go of the wing.

Two mechanics were walking towards the plane. Dundas turned to
them and made some comment on the flight. The three went into a
huddle, and Rivers walked to one side. Dundas was smiling and talking
cheerfully, but then Dundas was a very good actor.

When he came across to join Rivers, he said, 'Sorry about that.'

'Shall we go and sit down?'

Dundas looked towards the canteen, but shook his head. 'I think I'd
just as soon get back, if you don't mind.'


271
THE EYE IN THE D (1 C) R


Rivers's legs were trembling as they walked back to the car. He was
angry with himself for getting into such a state -- angry, ashamed and
inclined to pretend he'd been less frightened than he knew he had
been. He observed this reaction, thinking he was in the state of fatigue
and illness that favours the development of an anxiety neurosis, and
behaving in the way most likely to bring it about. He was doing
exactly what he told his patients not to do: repressing the awareness of
fear.

In the car going back to the hospital, Dundas examined his reactions
minutely. During the first spin, in addition to the squashed head feeling,
he'd felt sick. 'Not so much sick. More a sort of bulge in my throat.
And then during the loop I felt really sick. And faint. The sky went
dark.'

'And in the last spin?'

'That was terrible. I felt really confused.'

After leaving Dundas in the hospital entrance hall, Rivers went into
his room and threw his cap and cane on to the chair. Henry Head came
in a moment later. 'How was he?'

'Bad.'

'Sick?'

'And faint."

'Are you all right?'

'No, I seem to be suffering from terminal stiff upper lip. You know
the way I go on about not repressing fear? What did I do?' He spread
his hands.

'It's the Public School Factor, Will. We're all too well trained.'

'It's the Silly Old Fool Factor. Too many young men around.'

Head smiled. 'No, well, I know what you mean. One doesn't want
to seem totally decrepit.'

'I had this sudden sense that Dundas was hiding something. And that
didn't '

'He is.'

Rivers looked surprised.

'He's got a bottle of Bumstead's Gleet Cure in his locker.'

'Has he?'

'Sister Mitchell noticed it. Syphilis wouldn't make him go faint,
mind.'

'Lying awake worrying about it might.' Rivers sat in silence for a
moment. 'Well. Redirects the investigation a bit, doesn't it?'

'Makes it a hell of a lot simpler.' Head dropped into a sergeant272
THE EYE The N THE DOOR


major's baritone. '"Show us yer knob, lad." Are you coming to
dinner?'

'Yes, and then I must dash. I'm supposed to be seeing somebody at
eight.'


Rivers had the top floor of a large house near Hampstead Heath. The
house was within a hundred yards of the great gun, and there were
times when its proximity showed in every line of his face.

Prior arrived exactly on time, and was about to ring the bell when
he saw Rivers walking rapidly up the hill.

'Have you rung?' Rivers asked, getting out his key.

'No, I saw you coming.'

Rivers opened the door and stood aside to let Prior in. Mrs Irving,
Rivers's landlady, was hovering in the hall, wanting to complain about
the Belgian refugees on the second floor whose failure to understand
the extent of the food shortages was making her life a misery. When
that subject was exhausted, there were the raids to be discussed. Wasn't
it scandalous they'd been kept awake all night and not a word about it
in The Times'? Then there was her daughter, who'd been summoned
back from France, ostensibly because her mother was ill, in fact because
she was incapable of sorting out her servant problems. Girls kept
leaving her employ on the flimsy excuse that they could earn five
times as much in the munition factories. There was no accounting for
modern girls, she said. And Frances was so moody.

At last Mrs Irving was called away, by Frances presumably, at any
rate by a young woman with braided hair who gave Rivers a cool,
amused, sympathetic smile before she closed the door of the drawing
room.

'I hope she's letting you live rent free,' Prior said.

They walked up the stairs together. Rivers paused on the second
floor to look down into the garden. The laburnum, he said, was
particularly fine. Prior didn't believe in this sudden interest in horticulture.
The pause was to give him time to get his breath back. His chest
was tighter than it had been on his last visit, and Rivers would have
noticed that. Damn Rivers, he thought, knowing the response was
utterly unfair. Whenever he needed Rivers he became angry with
him, often to the point where he couldn't talk about what was worrying
him. He mustn't let that happen tonight.

Normally Prior took a long time to get started, but this evening he
was no sooner settled in his chair than he launched into an account of


273

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


his visit to Mrs Roper. What emerged most vividly was the eye in the
door. He reverted to this again and again, how elaborately painted it
had been, even to the veins in the iris, how the latrine bucket had been
placed within sight of it, how it was never possible to tell whether a
human eye was looking through the painted one or not. It was clear
from Prior's expression, from his whole demeanour, that he was seeing
the eye as he spoke. Rivers was always sensitive to the signs of intense
visualization in other people, since this was a capacity in which he
himself was markedly deficient, a state of affairs which had once seemed
simple and now seemed very complicated indeed. He switched his
attention firmly back to Prior, asked a few questions about his previous
relationship with Mrs Roper, then listened intently to his account of
the nightmare. 'Whose eye was it?' he asked, when Prior had finished.

Prior shrugged. '/ don't know. How should I know?'

'It's your dream.'

Prior drew a deep breath, reluctant to delve into a memory that
could still make his stomach heave. 'I suppose Towers is the obvious
connection.'

'Had you been thinking about that?'

'I remembered it when I was in the cell with Beattie. I ... I actually
saw it for a moment. Then later I remembered I used to go and buy
gob-stoppers from Beattie's shop.' He paused. 'I don't know whether
you remember, but when I picked up Towers's eye, I said, "What shall
I do with this gob-stopper?" '

'I remember.'

A long silence.

Rivers said slowly, 'When one eye reminded you of the other, was
that just the obvious connection? I mean, because they were both
eyes?'

Prior produced one of his elaborate shrugs. 'I suppose so.'

Silence.

'I don't know. It was in the prison, but later ... I don't know. I
knew I was going to have a bad night. You you you just get to know
the the feeling. I felt sorry for Beattie. And then I started thinking
about William -- that's the son -- and . . . you know, naked in his cell,
stone floor, snow outside . . .' He shook his head. 'It was . . . quite
powerful, and I ... I think I resented that. I resented having my
sympathies manipulated. Because it's nothing, is it?' A burst of anger.
'/ lost three men with frost-bite. And so I started thinking about that,
about those men and ... It was a way of saying, "All right, William,


274

I
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


your bum's numb. Tough luck." Though that's irrelevant, of course.'
He smiled wryly. 'It isn't a suffering competition.'

'And then you thought about Towers?'

'Yes. But not in the same way as ... as as the other men, I mean, I
wasn't focusing on the horror of it. It was ... I don't know.' He held
out his hand to Rivers, palm upwards. 'A sort of talisman. Do you
know what I mean? If that happens to you ..." The outstretched hand
started to shake. 'There's no possible room for doubt where your
loyalties are.'

Prior looked down at his shaking hand, and seemed to become
aware of it for the first time. He swallowed. 'Sorry, will you excuse
me a moment?'

He crashed out of the room. Doors opened and closed as he tried to
locate the bathroom. Rivers got up to help, then heard retching,
followed by a gush of water, followed by more retching. Prior
wouldn't want to be seen in that condition. He sat down again.

It was obviously his day to cope with people being sick.

He rested his chin on his clasped hands, and waited. It had taken two
months' hard work at Craiglockhart to get Prior to the point where he
remembered picking up Towers's eye, and even then he'd had to resort
to hypnosis, something he always did with great reluctance. Prior had
arrived at the hospital mute, rebellious, possibly the least cooperative
patient Rivers had ever encountered, and with a very marked tendency
to probe. To insist on a two-way relationship. He had accused Rivers
of being merely 'a strip of empathic wallpaper' and asked him what
the hell use he thought that was. Later this had became something of a
joke between them, but the probing went on, combined with a sort of
jeering flirtatiousness that had been surprisingly difficult to handle.

Prior's nightmares had been dreadful. He'd always insisted he
couldn't remember them, though this had been obviously untrue.
Eventually, he'd told Rivers in a tone of icy self-disgust that his dreams
of mutilation and slaughter were accompanied by seminal emissions.

Prior came back into the room.'Sorry about that,' he said casually,
settling back into his chair.

He hadn't reached the bathroom in time. The front of his tunic was
wet where he'd had to sponge it down. He noticed Rivers noticing the
stain, and his face tightened. He's going to make me pay for seeing
that, Rivers thought. No point questioning the logic of it. That was
Prior. 'Would you like a break?' Rivers asked, trying to relieve the
tension.


275
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Prior nodded.

'Let's go by the fire.'

They left the desk and settled themselves in armchairs. Rivers took
off his glasses and swept a hand down across his eyes.

Tired?'

'Slightly. As Mrs Irving was saying, we had our own personal airraid last 
night. I suppose somebody panics and starts firing.'

A pause while they stared into the fire. Prior said, 'I bumped into a
patient of yours the other night. Charles Manning.'

Rivers had started to clean his glasses. 'I umm --'

'Can't talk about another patient. No, of course you can't. He talked,
though. You know, when he mentioned your name I thought "war
neurosis" -- well, he does tend to twitch a bit, doesn't he? -- but no,
apparently not. Met a handsome soldier. Nasty policeman's hand on
shoulder. What do you know, suddenly he requires treatment. What
was the . . . ? Henry Head, that was it. "Henry Head can cure sodomites."
So off he goes to Head, who says, "Sorry, like to help. Snowed
under." With sodomites, presumably. The mind does rather boggle
doesn't it? "Why don't you try Rivers?"' Prior waited. When there
was no response he went on, 'Manning was surprisingly open about his
little tastes. Cameronians with sweaty feet, apparently. Touching, isn't
it, how some people develop a real devotion to the Highland regiments?
I wonder, Rivers . . .' Prior was making little smacking movements
with his lips, a don worrying away at some particularly recondite
problem. 'How would you set about "curing" somebody of fancying
Cameronians with sweaty feet?'

Rivers said coldly, 'I should apply carbolic soap to the feet.'

'Really? A leap ahead of Dr Freud there, I think.'

Rivers leant forward. 'Stop this. Dr Head is "snowed under" by
young men who've had large parts of their brains shot away. In a
rational society, a man who spent his days like that wouldn't have to
spend his evenings, his own time, remember, with men who could
perfectly well be left to get on with their own lives in their own way.
The fact that he's prepared to do it is a tribute to Head.'

'He's a friend of yours?'

'Yes.'

'I suppose he could refuse to take them?' Prior said.

'No, he can't do that. Two years' hard labour, remember?'

A short silence. 'I'm sorry.'

Rivers spread his hands.


276
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


But Prior wouldn't let go. 'All the same there must be times when
one patient actually does need to talk about another. I mean, it must be
obvious the conversation about the Cameronians could only have taken
place in bed?'

'The thought had occurred.'

'Well, suppose I need to talk about it? Suppose I'm racked with
guilt?'

'Are you?'

'The point is --' Abruptly, Prior gave up. 'No. I don't seem to feel
sexual guilt, you know. At all, really. About anything.'

Not true, Rivers thought. Prior had felt enormous guilt about the
nocturnal emissions that accompanied his nightmares. Guilt about an
involuntary action.

'I used to,' Prior said.

'When was that?'

'When I was twelve. Where we lived there was a young man who
used to be wheeled around on a trolley. I don't know what was wrong
with him, tuberculosis of the spine, something like that, something
terrible. And the trolley creaked, so you could always hear it coming.
And he was pointed out to us as an illustration of what happened if
you indulged in self-abuse.'

'Who told you that?'

'Scoutmaster. Mr Hailes. He actually said what came out was spinal
fluid. And of course you've only got a limited supply of that, and mine
was going down pretty fast. I used to lie awake and try not to do it,
and I'd get more and more frightened. Unfortunately, there was only
one thing that took my mind off the fear. So I did it again. And all the
time this creaking trolley was getting nearer and nearer. And we'd
been told the first signs of collapse were pallor and shadows under the
eyes. And I used to' get out of bed in the morning and look in the
mirror, and what do you know? Pallor. Shadows under the eyes.' He
laughed. 'It's funny now, but at one time I actually thought about
suicide.'

'What got you out of it?'

Prior smiled. 'Not what. Who. Paddy MacDowell.'

'The man who organized the Sheffield strike?'

The smile broadened. 'Yes, at a later stage. He was otherwise engaged
at the time. "Bashing his bishop." That's what we used to call it. Mac's
bishop got bashed oftener than anybody else's. He used to more or less
pull it out and do it in public -- and he was taller and stronger than any


277
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


of us. So that planted the first seed of doubt. And then Hailes said the
way to purity was to keep a glass of cold water by your bed, and then
when temptation struck, you could plunge "the Inflamed Organ" -- he
always called it that - into the water. Well, I relayed this to Mac. Mac
was common, he didn't go to Scouts - and he said, "But if it's stiff how
do you get it into the glass without spilling the water?" And I suddenly
had this picture of poor bloody Hailes standing there with his limp
"organ" in a glass of water and I just knew he was talking rubbish.
Poor little sod, he must've forgotten what an erection looked like.
Anyway, after that I gave up on guilt. I think I got through a lifetime's
supply in six months.'

'Was it a close friendship? With MacDowell?'

'You mean, did we --'

'No, I '

'Yes, it was close. We were that age, I suppose.'

Prior was looking much more relaxed. 'Do you want to go on?'
Rivers asked.

A slight hesitation. 'No, but I think I'd better.' For a while he didn't
speak, then, measuring the words with movements of his steepled
fingertips, he said, 'Dreams are attempts to resolve conflict. Right?
Well, I can't see any conflict in this one.'

'You stabbed somebody in the eye.'

'Rivers. It was a door.'

'The eye was alive.'

'Yes.'

'So why do you say there was no conflict?'

'Because I was so identified with William or Beattie or ... I don't
know. William, probably, because I was naked. And I was attacking
what seemed to me the most awful feature of their situation, which is
the eye. The constant surveillance. So I don't see that there's any
conflict. I mean it might be very inconvenient in real life but in the
dream there was no doubt whose side I was on. Theirs.'

Rivers waited. When it was clear Prior could offer nothing more he
said, 'You say the worst feature of their situation is the eye?'

'Yes.'

'The constantly being spied on?'

'Yes.'

Rivers asked gently, 'In that meeting with Mrs Roper, who was the
spy?'

'I --' Prior's mouth twisted. 'I was.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Another pause. Rivers prompted. 'So?'

'So,' Prior said in a disgusted singsong, jabbing with his index finger,
' "eye" was stabbing myself in the "I". And God knows one wouldn't
want a reputation for puns like that!'

A pause. Rivers asked, 'What do you think about that? Does it
seem . . .'

'It's possible, I suppose. I hate what I do. And I suppose I probably
felt I was in a false position. Well, obviously I did, I'd have to be mad
not to.'

'I want you to do something for me,' Rivers said. 'I want you to
write down any dreams you have that are as... as bad as this one. Just
record them. Don't try to interpret. And send them to me. I'll be
seeing you again on --'

'No, I'm sorry, I can't. It'll have to be the following week. If that's
all right? I'm going to see Hettie Roper.'

'Back to Salford? Where will you be staying?'

'At home.' He pulled a face. 'Yes, I know. How can I stay anywhere
else?'

Rivers nodded. He was remembering a visit of Prior's parents to
Craiglockhart. In one afternoon they'd undone every slight sign of
progress and precipitated an asthmatic attack. 'Does your father know
what you're doing? I mean, does he know what the job involves?'

'My God, I hope not.' Prior shifted restlessly. 'This is a dirty little
war, Rivers. I can honestly say I'd rather be in France.'

'Yes. I'm sure you would.'

Prior gave him a sharp look. 'You're worried, aren't you? Why?
Because I'm going home?'

'No, not particularly.'

'Oh, I see. Yes. It was a suicide dream.' His expression changed.
'You needn't worry. If anybody comes a cropper over this one, it will
not be me.'

He looked quite different, suddenly: keen, alert, cold, observant,
detached, manipulative, ruthless. Rivers realized he was seeing, probably
for the first time, Prior's public face. At Craiglockhart he'd been
aggressive and manipulative, but always from a position of comparative
helplessness. At times he'd reminded Rivers of a toddler clinging to his
father's sleeve in order to be able to deliver a harder kick on his shins.
Now, briefly, he glimpsed the Prior other people saw: the Lodes, the
Ropers, the Spragges, and it came as a shock. Prior was formidable.


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~m

SIX


backcloth a woman draped in brilliant green veils
writhed and twisted. She looked like an exotic lizard or a poisonous
snake. That, apparently, had been Wilde's intention. Robert Ross had
been telling them about it before the performance, recalling a day in
Paris, Wilde darting across the boulevards to look in shop windows,
asking, 'What about that?' or 'Or perhaps she should be naked except
for the jewels?' Yellow and green was his colour scheme, though
Wilde could not have foreseen what, for Charles Manning, was its
most disturbing feature: that the yellow was the exact shade of munition
girls' skins. Others wouldn't notice that, of course. It only struck him 
because one of his duties at the Ministry was to serve as the
military member on a committee set up to inspect the health and safety
standards of munitions factories. One saw row after row of such girls,
yellow-skinned, strands of ginger hair escaping from under their green
caps, faces half hidden by respirators.

Ross had been quite interesting on Wilde's plans for Salome, rather
more interesting than the performance so far. The most startling piece
of information was that Wilde himself had once played Salome, which
did rather boggle the imagination, since in photographs he looked far
from sylph-like, even by the normal standards of prosperous middle
aged men. Manning directed his attention back to the stage. Since he'd
made the effort to attend -- and it had been an effort, he was feeling
very far from well -- he ought at least to give the play a chance,
particularly since it had obviously meant a great deal to Wilde,
lokanaan's head had been brought in on a charger and Salome was
kneeling, hands outstretched towards it. Manning felt an unexpected
spasm of revulsion, not because the head was horrifying, but because it
wasn't. Another thing Wilde couldn't have foreseen: people in the
audience for whom severed heads were not necessarily made of papier
mache.

Salome began to fondle the head. 'Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to
kiss thy mouth, lokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my 
teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, lokanaan. I said 
it:
did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now.'

Manning was bored. If he were honest all this meant nothing to
him. He could see what Wilde was doing. He was attempting to


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convey the sense of a great passion constricted, poisoned, denied legitimate
outlets, but none the less forced to the surface, expressed as
destruction and cruelty because it could not be expressed as love. It was
not that he thought the theme trivial or unworthy or out of date -- certainly 
not that -- but the language was impossible for him. France
had made it impossible.

He'd only to think for a second of the stinking yellow mud of the
salient, that porridge in which the lumps were human bodies, or parts
of them, for an impassable barrier to come between his mind and these
words.


A line of men in gas masks clumps along the duckboards. Ahead of the
marching column what looks like a lump of mud sticks to the edge of the track.
Closer, it turns out to be a hand. Clumping feet. His own breathing harsh
inside the respirator, and then wriggling worm-like across the mud, a
voice, sly, insinuating, confidential: 'Where's Scudder? Where's Scudder?
Where's-'


On stage another question was being asked: 'But wherefore dost thou not
look at me, lokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and
scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut?'


He's dead, for Christ's sake, Manning thought. His knee had gone into
spasm, and he was in acute pain. He glanced sideways at Ross, whose
gaze was fixed on the stage, registering every nuance of the performance.
He looked ill. Even in this golden reflected light, he looked ill.
Oh, God, Manning thought, I wish this was over.

At last Herod cried, Kill that woman! and the soldiers rushed towards
Salome, daughter of Herodias, and crushed her beneath their shields.

A moment's silence, then the applause burst out and Maud Allan,
impersonal beneath the heavy make-up, was curtsying, blowing kisses,
smiling, the severed head dangling from one small white hand.

Ross was surrounded as soon as the lights went up. Manning pushed
through and shook hands with him, added his murmur to the general
buzz of congratulation, then pointed to his knee, and to the back of the
auditorium. Ross nodded. 'But you will come backstage?'

Pushing against the crowd to get to the top exit, Manning realized
how painful his leg was. He opened the door marked fire exit and
went through. A stone corridor, dimly lit, stretched ahead of him,
with none of the gilt and plush of the rest of the theatre. The men's


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lavatory was at the end of the corridor, down a short flight of stairs.
He peed, and then lingered over the business of washing his hands,
wanting to postpone the moment when he would have to go backstage
and swap the usual chit-chat. He would much rather have gone home.
He was sleeping in his own house again, making the need to keep an
eye on the builders his excuse, though he was glad of the chance to get
away from the club. That silly incident, the newspaper clipping sent to
his house, had disturbed him, simply because it could have been sent
by anybody. He no longer felt he could trust people, members of his
club, people he worked with. Even tonight his unwillingness to attend
had not been primarily from fear of being seen with Ross - though
that was a factor -- so much as from simple reluctance to mix. Perhaps
he was becoming too much of a recluse. Rivers certainly seemed to
think he was.
He looked into the mirror. The overhead light cast deep shadows
across his face.


Clumping feet. His own breathing harsh inside the respirator, and then wriggling
worm-like across the mud, a voice, sly, insinuating, confidential:


'What did you think of it?'

A man had come out of one of the cubicles and was staring at him in
the mirror. His sudden silent appearance startled Manning. 'Not for
me, I'm afraid,' Manning said, starting to dry his hands. 'What did you
think?'

The man, who had not moved, said abruptly, 'I thought it was the
mutterings of a child with a grotesquely enlarged and diseased
clitoris.'

'Did you? I just thought it had dated rather badly.'

'No,' the man said, as if his opinion were the only one that could
carry weight. 'It isn't dated. In fact, in terms of what they're trying to
do, it's an extremely clever choice.'

Manning looked into the mirror, determined not to be thrown by
this ludicrous and yet curiously menacing figure. 'You think enlarged
clitorises are a modern problem, do you?'

'All the discontents of modern women can be cured by
clitoridectomy.'

'It's a bit more complicated than that, surely.'

It was as if he hadn't spoken. The man came closer until his face was
beside Manning's in the glass. 'There are women in this city whose


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clitorises are so grotesquely enlarged, so horribly inflamed, they can be
satisfied ONLY BY BULL ELEPHANTS.'

Silence. Manning couldn't think of anything to say.

'Didn't I see you in the box with Robert Ross?'

Manning turned to face him. Looking him straight in the eye and
loading every word with significance, he said, 'I am from the Ministry
of Munitions.' He touched the side of his nose, raised a cautionary
finger and departed.

Walking along the corridor, he was surprised to find himself trembling.
The man was a complete lunatic. One didn't have to be Rivers
to diagnose that, and yet he had been, in a rather horrible way,
impressive.

In the crush of Maud Allan's dressing-room, he accepted a glass of
wine and edged his way towards Ross. 'I've just met the most extraordinary
man in the downstairs lavatory.'

'Hmm.'

'No, not "hmm." Mad. He went on and on about diseased
clitorises.'

'It'll be Captain Spencer. Grein said he'd seen him.'

'Who is he?' Manning asked.

'The source of all the trouble, my dear. He's the man who saw the
Black Book. Who knows the names.'

'But he's mad.'

'That won't stop them believing him. The fact is ..." Ross looked
around cautiously. 'She shouldn't have sued. I know I'm the last person
to say that, but '

'What else could she have done?'

Ross shook his head. 'Once they're in court they can name anybody.'

'Are they leaving you alone?'

'No. I have a police officer more or less permanently stationed in the
drawing-room. I'd offer the poor man a bed if I didn't think it would
be misinterpreted.'

When they left, twenty minutes later, Manning noticed Captain
Spencer standing under a street lamp on the other side of the road,
watching. Manning reached out to touch Ross's sleeve, then thought
better of it, and let his hand drop.


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m SEVEN



On the train to Manchester, Prior read the Roper correspondence.


Dear Winnie,

Don't worry about me pet I am orlrite Hettie come home for Xmas
and we had a good time even little Tommy purked up a bit and you
no what he's like you notice this new year there wasnt the same
nonsense talked as there was last I think last year knocked the stuffing
out of a lot of people except that bloody buggering Welsh windbag
he dont change his tune much the poor lads

Hettie made me go to the sales with her cos she new I wanted a
blowse there was a nice black one no trimings but Hettie says aw
Mam your making yourself an old woman anyway you no Hettie I
come away with a navy blue with a little yellow rose on it I think it
looks orlrite cant take it back if it dont with it being in the sale we
bumped into Mrs Warner you no her from the suffragettes and of
corse she asked after you but she was only standoffish you could see
her wanting to get away she says she thort to much was made of
Xmas and turcy was a very dry meat I says well Ive never tasted it so
I wouldn't no You no what Ronnie Carker used to say dont you
theyre only mecking use of you, Beattie when they go home at night
they dont even have to pick their nickers up mind you if Ronnie was
there they wouldn't need to take them of either

As regards your late visitor you want to remember youve had a
lot of worry with Alfs Mam being bad and then thier Ivy being so
funny but whatever you do dont let it go past the fortnite YOU
COME HOME otherwise youll end up with some bloody mucky
cow with a neck you can plant taties in women like that do no end of
damidge Ive seen bits of young lasses dragging themselves round years
after

Did Alf get the letter I sent it on thursday but the post is very slow
isnt it I spose its the backlog from Xmas if he did get it ask him to
send me the stuff as soon as poss if he didn't tell him not to worry 111
rite again I want it for a man who stopped here just before Xmas he
needs it to do somethink a bit risky but only for him he doesnt no
any think about you and Alf so theres no danger of you getting


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dragged in Anyway wil close now hoping this finds you as it leaves

me

Buckets of love
Mam


Dear Mam,

School again, dunno who's more fed up, me or the kids. The hall
roof sprang a leak during the holidays. No hope of getting it mended,
of course, and it was blowing a gale today. Absolutely streaming
down the panes and no lights on and Weddell rabbiting on about the
Empire and how we must all tighten our belts and brace ourselves,
though you don't see him bracing himself much, and he couldn't
tighten his belt not with that belly on him. I just kept praying one of
the drops from the ceiling was going to land on his bald pate, but no
luck. And all the kids coughing like mad. One starts off and then
they all start. So we got 'Our glorious Empire . . .' cough cough. 'We
must fight to the last man.' cough cough 'Our valiant lads . . .' cough
cough. Oh, and he's worked out how many old boys are in the
trenches. Quite a lot, which surprised me, I'd've thought they all had
rickets. There's rickets in my class. You know that very domed
forehead they get? Once you know to look out for that you realize
how much of it there is. And then we have to listen to all this puke
about what we're fighting for. Still, it's better than it was before
Christmas. I really did think I was going to throw up then. Peace on
earth to men of goodwill, and how we were all showing goodwill
by blowing up the Jerries and saving gallant little Belgium. I tried to
tell Standard Six what gallant little Belgium got up to in the Congo,
but he soon put a stop to that. I told him I was only doing it to
compare a bad colonial regime with the splendid record of our
glorious Empire, but I don't think he believed me. He doesn't trust
me further than he could throw me and that wouldn't be far. He's
put me on teaching the little ones this term and I don't think that's a
coincidence either.

8's been in touch. You know I've been worried sick about him
ever since he got nabbed, but he says it's not too bad. One of the lads
had a beard and they shaved him with a cut-throat razor. He ended
up pretty cut about, but it's surprising what they can find to laugh
at. He says he hasn't seen our William but of course he wouldn't
with him being in solitary. It might be the last we hear, though,
Mam, because he says the guard who smuggles the letters out is being
moved.

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One thing I have found out -- from 10, you won't know him -- is
the state of things in Etaples. That's the big camp where they all get
sent to train and he says he's never seen anything like it. He says they
treat the conscripts like shit. Men tied to posts for the least little thing
with their arms above their heads. Doesn't sound much, does it, but
he says it's agony. He says as sure as anything there's going to be a
blow up there. I hope so, I do hope so. A few officers shot by their
own men, that's all it'll take, just the one little spark, and it'll spread
like wildfire. I know it will.

Haven't heard anything from Mac. I try to keep busy, I'm running
round like scalded cat half the time because I daren't let myself think.
The little ones are nice, though. Nobody's got to them yet. I thought
of a new nursery rhyme the other day.


Georgie Georgie, pudding and pie
Perhaps the girls'll make him cry


Let's keep our fingers crossed, eh?

You want to stock up on food, Mam. I know it's difficult when
you've got Tommy to feed, but if you get the chance put a few tins
by. If it ever comes to coupons, conchies' families'll be at the back of
the queue, if they get any at all.

Don't worry about me, I'm all right. You think about yourself for
a change,

Lots of love,
Hettie


P.S. If that bloody Mac doesn't write soon I'll bash his bloody head
in.


Dear Ma,

Find the stuff you asked for enclosed. Tell your friend to follow the
directions exactly. You will think me a softie I expect but I feel sorry
for the dogs. If you get close enough to the poor brutes, I pity them.
Dead in twenty seconds. Anyway, good luck. Reckon we'll have
peace by next Christmas? Here's hoping,

Alf


P.S. Winnie says to say she came all right.


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


My darling Hettie,

You'll be wondering why you haven't heard sooner. Well, there's
been all hell let loose. Do you remember that lad with the hump on
his back? Would insist on going in front of the tribunal instead of
getting out of it on health grounds, which he certainly would have
done. I've been trying to get him a passage to Ireland and eventually
succeeded, but he was picked up just as he was getting on to the
boat. The hump gave him away. We'd tried everything to hide it.
Charlie suggested putting a dress on him and trying to make him
look like a pregnant woman walking backwards, but I don't know
how you do that. Anyway, he's back in Wandsworth, where they're
doing their best to flatten it for him no doubt. But it's a nuisance
because it means we have to lie low and that means everybody else
has had their trips to the Emerald Isle postponed. It clogs the entire
system up, and I lose patience, I'm afraid. I know individuals matter,
but getting six or seven men across to Ireland isn't going to stop the
war. There's only one way do that, and we both know what it is.

I'm staying with Charlie Greaves's mother. don't write. I know
you know the address, but the trouble is you're not the only one
who knows it. All incoming post is opened. I don't want you in this
any deeper than you are already. And I'm not treating you like 'the
little woman'. There's got to be people they don't know about,
otherwise there's no safe houses, and no network to pass people on.
Speaking of which, I sent a lad to your Mam just before Christmas.
Did you happen to bump into him? I wondered afterwards if I'd
done the right thing. Not that I've any doubts about him, he's a
good lad, keen as mustard, but he does get carried away. I don't
suppose it matters, but if you write to your Mam you might mention
it, though I suppose he'll have moved on by now. How is she, by the
way? I wish we could get Tommy out of there. He's not doing her
any good at all.

I'm writing this in bed, which is a big brass one, masses of room,
and bouncy. It's tippling down outside and the wind's blowing, and
I'd give anything to have you in here with me. Soon.

All my love,
Mac


It seemed strange to Prior to be reading his friends' private letters,
though these had all - with the exception of Alf's letter and its inconvenient
mention of dogs -- been read aloud at the Old Bailey. Even
Hettie's little nursery rhyme had boomed around No. i Court, as the


287
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THE EYE IN THE DOOR

flU
Attorney-General argued it implied her involvement in the conspiracy.

No, there was no privacy left in these letters; he was not violating
anything that mattered. And yet, as the train thundered into a tunnel
and the carriage filled with the acrid smell of smoke, Prior turned to
face his doubled reflection in the window and thought he didn't like
himself very much. It was the last letter he minded: the gentleness of
Mac's love for Hettie exposed, first in open court and now again to
him.

They'd found that letter in the pocket of Hettie's skirt when they
went to the school to arrest her.


EIGHT


Harry Prior was getting ready to go out. A clean shirt had been put to
air on the clothes-horse in front of the fire, darkening and chilling the
room. Billy Prior and his mother sat at the table, she with her apron
on, he in shirt and braces, unable either to continue their interrupted
conversation or to talk to Harry. He bent over the sink, lathering his
face, blathering and spluttering, sticking his index fingers into his ears
and waggling them. Then, after rinsing the soap off, he placed one
forefinger over each nostril in turn and slung great gobs of green snot
into the sink.

Prior, his elbow touching his mother's side, felt her quiver fastidiously.
He laced his fingers round the hot cup of tea and raised it to his
lips, dipping his short nose delicately as he drank. How many times as a
child had he watched this tense, unnecessary scene, sharing his mother's
disgust as he would have shared her fear of lightning. Now, as a man,
in this over-familiar room -- the tiles worn down by his footsteps, the
table polished by his elbows -- he thought he could see the conflict
more even-handedly than he had seen it then. It takes a great deal of
aggression to quiver fastidiously for twenty-eight years.

He thought, now, he could recognize his mother's contribution to
the shared tragedy. He saw how the wincing sensitivity of her response
was actually feeding this brutal performance. He recalled her gentle,
genteel, whining, reproachful voice going on and on, long after his
father's stumbling footsteps had jerked him into wakefulness; how he


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had sat on the stairs and strained to hear, until his muscles ached with
the tension, waiting for her to say the one thing he would not be able
to bear. And then the scuffle of running steps, a stifled cry, and he
would be half way downstairs, listening to see if it was just a single
slap, the back of his father's hand sending his mother staggering against
the wall, or whether it was one of the bad times. She never had the
sense to shut up.

But then, he thought, his face shielded by the rim of his cup, one
might equally say she had never been coward enough to refrain from
speaking her mind for fear of the consequences. It would be very easy,
under the pretext of 'even-handedness', to slip too far the other way
and blame the violence in the home not on his brutality, but on her
failure to manage it.

As a child, Prior remembered beating his clenched fist against the
palm of the other hand, over and over again, saying, with every smack
of flesh on flesh, PIG PIG PIG PIG. Obviously, his present attempt to
understand his parents' marriage was more mature, more adult, more
perceptive, more sensitive, more insightful, more almost anything you
cared to mention, than PIG PIG PIG PIG, but it didn't content him,
because it was also a lie: a way of claiming to be 'above the battle'. And
he was not above it: he was its product. He and she -- elemental forces,
almost devoid of personal characteristics - clawed each other in every
cell of his body, and would do so until he died. 'They fight and fight
and never rest on the Marches of my breast,' he thought, and I'm
fucking fed up with it.

His father had got his jacket and cap on now, and stood ready to go
out, looking at them with a hard, dry, stretched-elastic smile, the two
of them together, as they had always been, waiting for him to go. Till
see you, then,' he said.

There was no question, as in the majority of households there would
have been, of father and son going for a drink together.

'When will you be back?' his mother asked, as she had always done.

'Elevenish. Don't wait up.'

She always waited up. Oh, she would have said there was the fire to
damp down, tomorrow's bait to be got ready, the table to be laid, the
kettle to be filled, but all these tasks could have been done earlier.
Prior, once more lowering his eyes to the cup, tried not to ask himself
how many violent scenes might have been avoided if his mother had
simply taken his father at his word and gone to bed. Hundreds? Or
none? The man who spoke so softly and considerately now might well


289
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I

have dragged her out of bed to wait on him, when he staggered in
from the pub with ten or eleven pints on board.
Leave it, he told himself. Leave it.


After his father had gone, Prior and his mother went on sitting at the  |§

table while they finished drinking their tea. She never mentioned
France or Craiglockhart. She seemed to want to ignore everything that
had happened to him since he left home. This was both an irritation
and a relief. He asked after boys he'd known at school. This one was
dead, that one wounded, Eddie Wilson had deserted. He remembered
Eddie, didn't he? There were deserters in the paper every week, she
said. The policeman who found Eddie Wilson hiding in his mother's
coal-hole had been awarded a prize of five shillings.

'There was a letter in the paper the other week,' she said. 'From
Father Mackenzie. You remember him, don't you?'

She found last week's paper and handed it to him. He read the letter,
first silently and then aloud, in a wickedly accurate imitation of Father
Mackenzie's liturgical flutings. ' "There may be some among you,
who, by reason of your wilful and culpable neglect of the Laws of
Physical development, are not fit to serve your country, but --" Oh,
for Christ's sake!' He thew the paper down. 'Some among them carry
their wilful and culpable neglect to the point of getting rickets. If he's
physically well developed it's because his mother could afford to shove
good food in his gob four times a day.' And goodness wasn't he well
developed, Prior thought, remembering Father Mackenzie in his socks.

'He just thinks a lot of people are shirking, Billy. You've got to
admit he's got a point.'

'Do you know the height requirement for the Bantam regiments? Five feet. And do 
you know how many men from round here fail
that?

'Billy, sometimes you sound exactly like your father.'

He picked up the paper and pretended to read.

'There's a lot of talk about a strike at the munition works. Your
father's all for it. Well, he would be, wouldn't he?'

'What's it about?'

'I don't know.' She groped for an unfamiliar word. 'Dilution?'

'Sounds right.'

'Well, you can imagine your dad. "Bits of lasses earning more than I
do." "You mark my words," he says, "after the war they'll bring in
unskilled labour. The missus'll be going to work, and the man'll be sat


290
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at home minding the bairn. It's the end of craftsmanship. This war's
the Trojan horse, only they're all too so-and-soing daft to see it."'

Typical, Prior thought. However determined his father might be to
raise the status of the working class as a whole, he was still more
determined to maintain distinctions within it.

'Oh, and he doesn't like false teeth. That's another thing,' his mother
went on. 'Mrs Thorpe's got them, you know. "Mutton dressed up as
lamb," he says. The way he goes on about her teeth you'd think she'd
bit him. And then there's Mrs Riley's dustbin. Lobster tins, would you
believe. "They were glad of a bit of bread and scrape before the war."'

'He's got a funny idea of socialism.'

She shrugged. 'I wouldn't know. Things like women's rights, he
was never in favour of that.'

'No.'

'I remember him going on at Beattie Roper about that.'

A pause. 'I went to see Beattie.'

She looked stunned. 'In prison?'

'Yes.'

'You've no call to go getting yourself mixed up in that.'

Faced with this sudden blaze of anger, he said, 'I have to. It's my
job.'

'Oh.' She nodded, only half believing him.

'How's Hettie?'

His mother froze. 'I wouldn't know. I never see her.'

There had been a time, when he was seventeen, when he and Hettie
Roper had been 'walking out', and, for once, the 'quaint expression'
had been painfully accurate. 'Walking' was exactly what they did. And
talking too, of course: passionate, heated talk, about socialism and
women's rights, spiritualism, Edward Carpenter's ideas on male comradeship,
whether there could be such a thing as free love. He remembered
one day on the beach at Formby, sitting in the dunes as the sky
darkened, and the sun hung low over the sea. All day he had been
wanting to touch her, and had not dared do it. The sun lingered, tense
and swollen, then spilled itself on to the water. 'Come on,' he said,
picking up his jacket. 'We'd better be getting back.'

That night, as on so many other nights, his mother had been waiting
up for him. A book was open on her knee, but she hadn't bothered to
light the gas. And then the questions started. He realized then that she
hated Hettie Roper. He didn't know why.

'Does she still run the shop?' he asked.


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'No point. Nobody 'd buy anything off her if she did.'
'Does she work?'
'Not that I know of.'
'So how does she live?'
A shrug. 'She's still got the allotment.'
'I thought I'd pop round and see her.'
Silence.

Reminding himself he was no longer seventeen, Prior stood up and
put his cup on the draining-board. 'I won't be long.'


Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings
until after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug
must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they
could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting
to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public
disapproval. 'Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You'd think
she could find herself summat to do, wouldn't you?' Now, looking
up and down the street, Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were
out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to

go
He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe's name that came particularly to
mind because she'd been one of the worst offenders, with her lard
white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby
worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab
end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he'd already identified her, for there
she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he'd
always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh
coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive
woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn't know who else it
could be.

They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing
back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here:
for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs
Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they
opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was
this even, flashing whiteness. 'What white teeth you have, Grandma,'
he said.

'All the better to eat you with,' said Mrs Riley. 'And who are you calling 
Grandma?'

Mrs Thorpe asked, 'How long have you got, love?' And then,


292

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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


before he had time to answer, 'Ech, aren't we awful, always asking
that?'

'Two days.'

'Well, make the most of it. Don't do anything we wouldn't do,
mind.'

He smiled. 'How much scope does that give me?'

'Fair bit, these days,' said Mrs Riley.
He remembered, suddenly, that he'd sucked the breasts of both these
women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth,
and he'd been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the
same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly
fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs
Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each
with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed
him and, in so doing, had probably saved his life. He had known this a
long time, but somehow, when Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had been
shapeless bundles in shawls, it had not registered. Now, though not
easily discomforted, he felt himself start to blush.

'Look at that,' said Mrs Riley. 'He's courting, I can always tell.'

'Are you courting?' Mrs Thorpe asked.

'Yes. Her name's Sarah. Sarah Lumb.'

'Good strong name that,' said Mrs Riley.

'She's a good strong lass.'

'Mebbe has need to be,' said Mrs Riley, looking him up and down,
speculatively. 'Do y' fancy a drink?'

'No, I'd like to, but I've got to see somebody.'

'Well, if you change your mind we'll be in the Rose and Crown.'

And off they went, cackling delightedly, two married women going
out for a drink together. Unheard of. And in his father's pub too. No
wonder the old bugger thought Armageddon had arrived.

Prior walked on, noticing everywhere the signs of a new prosperity.
Meat might be scarce, bread might be grey, but the area was booming
for all that. Part of him was pleased, delighted even. 'Bits of lasses
earning more than I do'? Good. Lobster tins in Mrs Riley's dustbin? Good. He 
would have given anything to have been simply, unequivocally,
unambiguously pleased. But he passed too many houses with
black-edged cards in the window, and to every name on the cards he
could put a face. It seemed to him the streets were full of ghosts, grey,
famished, unappeasable ghosts, jostling on the pavements, waiting outside
homes that had prospered in their absence. He imagined a fire


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w,

blazing up, a window shaking its frame, a door gliding open, and then
somebody saying, 'Wind's getting up. Do you feel the draught?' and
shutting the door fast.

4

The glow he'd felt in talking to Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley faded.
He slipped down the back alley between Marsh Street and Gladstone
Terrace, making for Tite Street and Beattie Roper's shop, a journey he  j

must have taken thousands of times as a child, a boy, a young man, but
now he moved silently across the cobbles, feeling almost invisible. He
was no more part of the life around him than one of those returning
ghosts.

He came out at the top of Hope Street and started to walk down it.
Hope Street ran parallel with the canal and was known, predictably,
as No-Hope Street, because of the alacrity with which its inhabitants
transferred themselves from one to the other. At least before the war
they did. Suicides were rare now. The war had cheered everybody
up.

Half way down, on the corner of Hope Street and Tite Street, was
Beattie's shop, its windows boarded up. He knocked loudly on the
door.

'You'll not get an answer there, love,' a woman said, passing by. He
waited until she'd turned the corner, then knelt and peered through the
letter-box. The counters were cleared, the floor swept clean. He called,
'Hettie. It's me, Billy.' The door into the living-room stood open. He
felt her listening. 'Hettie, it's me.'

She came at last, kneeling on her side of the door to check he was
alone. There was a great rattling of bolts and chains, and she stood
there, a thin, dark, intense woman, older than he remembered. No
longer pretty.

'Billy.'

'I've been to see your mother.'

'Yes. She wrote.'

A long hesitation, which told him immediately what he wanted to
know. He took off his cap and stepped forward. Almost simultaneously,
she stood aside and said, 'Come in.'

The living-room was empty. Both doors, one to the scullery, the
other to the stairs, were closed. He looked round the room, taking his
time. A fire blazed in the grate. The kettle stood on the hob beside it.
The table, with its green cloth, still took up most of the space, six
empty chairs ranged neatly round it. Hettie followed his gaze, and he
could see how changes she'd become accustomed to - the empty chairs


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-- became strange again, and unbearable as she saw them through his
eyes. 'Oh, Billy,' she said, and then she was in his arms and crying.

He cuddled her, lifting her off her feet, rocking her from side to
side. Only when the sobs subsided did he loosen his grip, and let her
slide to the ground. Her spread fingers encountered belt, buckles, buttons,
tabs, stars: the whole hated paraphernalia. He said quickly, 'I see
you've still got Tibbs.'

A fat tabby cat lay coiled on the rug, the pale underside of his chin
exposed. Ghost smells of cat pee and creosote drifted in from the shop.

'Yes,' she said, laughing and sniffing. 'Pees on everything now.'

Her laughter acknowledged the fund of shared memories. Thank
God, Prior thought, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

She fetched the tea-pot and started making tea. 'How's me mam?
She says she's all right.'

'Thin. But she's eating. She's come off the strike.'

'Hmm. How long for? I tell her she shouldn't do it, but she says,
"How else can I convince them?" '

'Have you been to see her?'

'I'm going next week. I gather we've got you to thank for that?'

'I put in a word.'

She poured the tea. 'How come you're in a position to put in a
word?'

'Got a job in the Ministry, that's all. They're not sending me back
'cause of the asthma.'

'But what do you do?'

He laughed. 'Exactly what I did before the war. Push pieces of paper
across a desk. But I managed to get me hands on your mam's file - via
a young lady in the filing department -- and then I thought I'd go and
see her.'

'And you just bluffed your way in?'

'Well, not exactly, I had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper.
That gets you anywhere.'

'Huh! I wish we had some.'

She believed him. Just as once her mother had believed Spragge. She
was sitting at the head of the table, in her mother's chair, no doubt
because that made her mother's absence seem less glaring, and he was
sitting, almost certainly, where Spragge had sat. He looked across to
the dresser, and there sure enough was the photograph of William.

Hettie saw him looking at it, and reached behind her. 'I don't think
you've seen this one, have you?' she said, and handed it across.


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William was leaning against a stone wall, his arms loosely folded,
and he was smiling, though the smile had become strained as the
photographer fiddled with his camera. He was wearing bicycle clips. A
pencilled date on the back said 'May 1913'. Prior thought he knew the
place, they'd gone there together, the three of them. Behind the wall,
not visible in the photograph, a steep bank shelved away, covered with
brambles and bracken, full of rabbits whose shiny round droppings lay
everywhere.

'Why does it look so long ago?' he said, holding the photograph out
in front of him. Without conscious duplicity (though not without
awareness), he was groping for the tone of their pre-war friendship.

She laughed, a harsh yelp that didn't sound like Hettie.

'No, but it does, doesn't it?' he persisted. 'I mean, it looks longer than
it is. You know, I was thinking about that on the way over. About. . .'
He took a deep breath. 'You know if you were writing about something
like . . . oh, I don't know, enclosures, or the coming of the
railways, you wouldn't have people standing round saying ... ' He
put a theatrical hand to his brow. ' "Oh, dear me, we are living through
a period of terribly rapid social change, aren't we?" Because nobody'd
believe people would be so ... aware. But here we are, living through
just such a period, and everybody's bloody well aware of it. I've heard
nothing else since I came home. Not the words, of course, but the awareness. 
And I just wondered whether there aren't periods when
people do become aware of what's happening, and they look back on
their previous unconscious selves and it seems like decades ago. Another
life.'

'Yes, I think you're right.' She thought for a moment. 'I went to
London a couple of months ago, to see one of the few suffragette
friends who still wants to know me. And we were sitting in her house,
and there was a raid, and we actually heard shrapnel falling on the
trees, and do you know it sounded exactly like rain. And she was . . . full of 
herself. Short hair, breeches, driving an ambulance, all things
she'd never've been allowed to do in a million years. And suddenly she
grabbed hold of me and she said, "Hettie, for women, this is the first
day in the history of the world." '

'And the last for a lot of men.'

Her face darkened. 'Don't beat me over the head with that, Billy. I'm the 
pacifist, remember.'

'At least you've got the vote.'

'No, I haven't. I'm not thirty. Mam hasn't, she's in prison. Winnie


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hasn't, same reason. William hasn't, he's had his vote taken away 'cause
he's a conchie. So as far as votes go this family's one down on before the
war.'

'Where is William?' Prior said, looking at the photograph again.

'Dartmoor. He took the Home Office scheme. He's doing "useful
work unconnected with the war".' She snorted. 'Breaking stones.'

'I'm surprised he took it.'

'You wouldn't be if you saw him. He's that thin, you wouldn't
know him.'

'I had Mike Riordan in my platoon. You remember Mike? I
didn't know him either. Only in his case it was the face that was
missing.'

'It isn't a competition, Billy.'

'No. You're right.'

She touched his sleeve. 'I wish we were on the same side.'

'Well, as far as your mam's concerned we are. You surely don't
think I'm on Spragge's side?'

Her expression changed. 'Oh, that man. Do you know, I met him
once, just for a couple minutes, and I knew there was something wrong
with him.'

'You didn't know about the poison?'

'No, she kept all that from me. I wish she hadn't, I'd've told her she
was daft to trust him. And that smirking bastard at the Old Bailey. It
was awful, Billy. You're stood in that dock and you feel guilty, even
though you know you haven't done it. For months afterwards I felt
people could look straight through me.' She stopped. 'Here, drink
your tea. It'll get cold.'

'How are you managing?'

'I survive. Your dad brings me a bit of meat now and then. Don't
look so surprised, Billy.' A pause. 'I tell you who's been good. Mrs
Riley. Every time she bakes she brings something round. You know
mebbe just half a dozen rock buns, but every bit helps. I've nothing to
thank the others for, except a few bricks through the window. What
gets me you know is the way they used to cut me mam dead in the
street, they'd just look through her. But let them be in trouble, or their
daughters be in trouble, and there they were, banging on the back
door. I says, "You're a fool, Mam. Why should you risk prison for
them?" But it was, "Oh, well, she had to have instruments last time,"
or "Poor bairn, she's only seventeen." And she'd do it for them. And it
all came out at the trial. You know, killing a baby when its mother's


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two months gone, that's a terrible crime. But wait twenty years and
blow the same kid's head off, that's all right.'

Prior winced, thinking how strange it was that such words should
come so easily from her mouth, that she should have so little conception
of what memories they conjured up for him.

'What about Mac? Do you ever see him?'
Her face became guarded. 'No.'

'Never?'

'You know bloody well, Billy, he wouldn't dare come here.'

Prior sat back in his chair. 'I know he couldn't stay away.' He
waited. 'I thought I heard somebody just now.'

Her eyes went to the scullery door.

'Walking up and down.'

'It's a restless house. You've got to remember me mam held seances
here. In this room.'

'You don't believe in that.'

'I know me mam wasn't a fraud. Something happened. Whether it
was just the force of people's need or not, I don't know, but there used
to be nights when this table was shaking. It changes a place. I sit here
on me own some nights and I hear footsteps going round and round
the table.'

He had a dreadfully clear perception of what her life must be like, alone in 
this house, with the empty chairs and the boarded-up windows.
It didn't surprise him that she heard footsteps going round the table.

'Talking of Mac,' he said, and felt her stiffen. 'I thought I'd go
round and see his mam. I don't suppose he still sees her, does he?'

'That's a good idea, Billy. I'd willingly go, but I doubt if she'd thank
me for it. In fact, I doubt if she'd invite me in.'

'No, she's a great patriot, Lizzie.' He was smiling to himself. 'You
know the last time I was home I bumped into her. Well.' He laughed.
'Fell over her. You know the alley behind the Rose and Crown? "Just
resting," she says. I got her on her feet and she took one look at the
uniform and she says, "Thank God for an honest man." And out it all
came. Apparently on the day war broke out she did seven men for free
because they'd just come back from the recruiting office. They said. "And do 
you know," she says. "Five of them were still walking round
in civvies a year after." She says she had a go at Wally Smith about it. And he 
says, "Well they wouldn't let me in because of me teeth." And
Lizzie says, "What the fuck do they want you to do? Bite the buggers?"'

Hettie was looking very uncomfortable. Since she was far from


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prudish he could only suppose the story of Lizzie and her August 4th
burst of generosity was likely to be painful to the person on the other
side of the scullery door. He thought of saying, 'Oh, come on, Mac,
stop arsing about,' but he didn't dare risk it. Better make his plea first,
then leave them alone to talk about it.

'I'd like to see Mac, Hettie.'

'So would I,' she flashed. 'Fat chance.'

'No, I mean I really do need to see him. If I'm going to do anything
for your mam, I've got to talk to him first. He --'

'He didn't know anything about it.'

'No, but he knew Spragge. Spragge was with him the night before
he came here. He gave Spragge the address.'

'Do you think he doesn't know that? Spragge took in an awful lot
of people, Billy. He had letters.'

'I know. I'm not. . . I'm not blaming Mac. I just want to talk to him.
He might remember something that would help. You see, if we could
prove Spragge acted as an agent provocateur with somebody else -- or
even tried to - that would help to discredit his evidence in your mam's
case.'

She glanced at the scullery door. 'I know somebody who bumps
into Mac now and then. I'll see if I can get a message through.'

'That's all I ask.' He stood up. 'And now I'd better be off.'

She didn't try to detain him. At the door he paused and said loudly,
'I thought I'd go for a walk by the cattle pens. I thought I'd go there
now.'

She looked up at him. 'Goodnight, Billy.'


NINE


It was not quite dusk when Prior reached the cattle pens, empty at this
time of the week and therefore unguarded. Mac, if he came at all,
would wait till dark, so there was time to kill. He lit a cigarette and
strolled up and down, remembering the taste of his first cigarette given
to him by Mac - and the valiant efforts he'd made not to be sick.
He stood for a while, his hands gripping the cold metal of one of the
pens. He was recalling a time when he'd been ill -- one of the many --


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


and he'd gone out and wandered the streets, not well enough yet to go
back to school but bored with being in the house. It had been a hot
day, and he was muffled up, a prickly scarf round his neck, a poultice
bound to his chest. The heat beat up into his face from the pavements
as he dragged himself along, stick-thin, white, bed-bound legs moving
in front of him, the smell of Wintergreen rising into his nostrils. The
name made him think of pine trees, snow-covered hills and the way
the sheets felt when you thrust your hot legs into a cool part, away
from the sticky damp.

He heard their hoofs before he saw them and, like everybody else,
stopped to watch as the main street filled with cattle being driven to  3

the slaughterhouse. A smell of hot shit. Dust rising all round, getting I

into his lungs, making him cough and bring up sticky green phlegm.
He backed away from the noise and commotion, ran up a back alley
between the high dark walls, then realized that, as in a nightmare, a
cow was following him, with slithering feet and staring eyes, and men
chasing after her. More men came running from the other end of the
alley. They cornered her, closing in from both sides, and the terrified
animal slipped in her own green shit and fell, and they threw heavy
black nets around her and dragged her back to the herd, while all along
the alley housewives whose clean washing had been swept aside erupted
from their backyards, shouting and waving their arms.

At the moment the nets landed Prior had looked across the heaving backs and 
seen a boy, about his own age, standing pressed back against
the wall, his white, still face half hidden by a mass of cottery black hair.
Mac.

The sight of the cow in the net stayed with him. Many a night he
dreamt about her and woke to lie staring into the swirling darkness.
Sometimes when he woke it was already light, and then, afraid to go
back to sleep, he would creep downstairs, open the door quietly and
slip out into the empty, dawn-smelling streets. The only other person
about at that hour was the knocker-up, an old woman with bent back      i

and wisps of white hair escaping from a black woollen shawl, who        f

went from house to house, tapping on the upper windows with her A

long pole, waiting for the drowsy or bad-tempered answer, and
moving on. Drifting along behind her, he'd found his way to the cattle
pens, and to the deepest friendship of his childhood.   -4

He left the pens now and walked into the high shed, which was as        |J,

vast as a cathedral, and echoing. He walked up and down, dwarfed by     *p

the height, imagining the place as it used to be and presumably still


300
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


was, if you came at the right time of week. He remembered the rattle
of rain on the corrugated iron roof, imagined it pouring down as it
had on the night he first stayed here with Mac. He looked round, and
the empty stalls filled with terrified cattle, huge shadows of tossing
horns leapt across the ceiling as the guards moved up and down with
lanterns, checking that the overcrowded animals were not suffocating
to death. If they suffocated before they could be slaughtered, their
meat was unfit for human consumption, though it found its way on to
the market as 'braxy', in shops patronized only by the very poor.
There was no profit to be had from braxy, so if an animal was distressed
and appeared to be near death the guards would rouse the slaughterman
to come and dispatch it. These guards were supposed to be on duty all
night, but since they'd been away for long stretches on the drovers'
road they naturally wanted to sleep with their wives or girlfriends, and
that was where Mac came in. The job was subcontracted to him at a
penny a night, and he was good at it. He could calm a cow, even a
cow who'd already scented blood, to the point where she would yield
milk into a lemonade bottle. Prior could almost see him now, wedged
into a wall of sweating flesh, slithering on the green shit that always
had about it the smell of terror, coaxing, whispering, stroking, burrowing
his head into the cow's side, and then coming back in triumph
with the warm milk. They'd swigged it from the bottle, sitting side by
side on the bales of straw that stood in one corner of the shed, and
then, slowly and luxuriously, like businessmen savouring particularly
fine cigars, they smoked the tab ends Mac had picked up from the
streets.

Prior wandered across to the bales of straw and sat down, his cigarette
a small planet shining in the darkness, for the night was closing in fast.
He could just see the nail in the wall which had always been their
target in peeing competitions, and from the nail he moved in imagination
to the school playground. He had a lot of playground memories
of Mac, and classroom memories too, though few of these were happy.
Mac was dirty and his hair was lousy. He wore men's shoes, and a
jacket whose sleeves came to the tips of his fingers, and he was always
being beaten. As children do, Prior supposed, he'd started by assuming
that Mac was beaten more often than anybody else because he was
naughtier than anybody else. He was inclined to believe now that the only 
valuable part of his education at that abysmal school had been
learning that this was not true. Lizzie's profession was well known. On
the one occasion she'd come to school, her speech had been slurred and


301
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


she'd raised her voice in the corridor; they'd all watched her through
the classroom windows, every varied pitch of her indignation expressed
in the jiggling of the feather on her hat. No doubt she'd come down to
protest because they'd beaten Mac too hard. If so, the visit did no
good: he was beaten again as soon as she left. Prior remembered those
beatings. He remembered the painful pressure of emotions he'd felt:
fear, pity, anger, excitement, pleasure. He wondered now whether the
pleasure could possibly have been as sexual as he remembered it. Probably
not.

After one such occasion Prior had sat with his back to the railings
that divided the boys' playground from the girls', munching a sandwich
and watching Mac. Mac was running up and down the playground
withjoe Smailcs on his back, staggering beneath the weight, his grubby
hands with their scabbed knuckles clasping Joe Smailes's podgy pink
thighs. Mac was a bread horse: he gave other boys rides on his back in
exchange for the crust from their bread or the core of their apple.
Lizzie had not been poor, as the neighbourhood understood poverty, but she was 
too disorganized by drink to provide regular meals. What
disturbed Prior this time, what ensured that his eyes never left Mac's
face as he staggered up and down, was the knowledge that he'd deserved
a beating every bit as much as Mac, but because he was clean,
tidy, well turned out, likely to win a scholarship and bring desperately
needed credit to the school, he'd been spared. He bit into his second
sandwich, thought, munched, choked. Suddenly he ran across the playground,
thrust what was left of the sandwich into Mac's hands, burst
into tears, and ran away.

Who needed Marx when they had Tite Street Board School, Prior
thought, stubbing out his cigarette carefully between strips of golden
straw. Still absorbed in memories of the past, he got to his feet and
started to walk up and down. The moon had risen; its light was bright
enough to cast his shadow across the floor. His first awareness of Mac
was of a shadow growing beside his own, then the touch of a hand on
his shoulder, and a light amused voice asking, 'Am I to understand
you've been up my mother?'

Prior turned. 'What makes you say that?'

'All that stuff about "Thank God for an honest man", I don't know
what else it could mean.'

'Now would 7 do that?'

'I don't know. Before the war you'd've fucked a cow in a field if
you could've found one to stand still for you.'


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And the bull. 'Mac, I swear --'

'Aw, forget it. If I was sensitive about that I'd've croaked years ago.' Mac 
was smiling. This was almost, but not quite, a joke.

Prior said, 'Shall we sit down?'

They sat on bales of straw a few feet apart, united and divided by
the rush of memory. They could see clearly enough, by moonlight and
the intermittent glow of cigarettes, to be able to judge each other's
expression.

'It was you in the kitchen, then,' Prior said. 'I thought it was.'

'Why, who'd you think it might be?'

Prior hesitated. 'I was afraid it might be some poor frightened little
sod of a deserter, I was afraid he'd '

'What would you have done?'

'Turned him in.'

Mac looked at him curiously. 'Even though he's "a poor frightened
little sod"?'

"Yes. What about the poor frightened little sods who don't desert?'

'Well, at least we know where we stand.'

'I don't want to start by telling you a pack of lies.'

Mac laughed. 'You told Hettie a few. That girl in the filing department,
the one who got you the files, my God, Billy, you must be
ringing her bell.'

'Say it, Mac.'

'All right, I'll say it. It strikes me you'd be a bloody good recruit, for
them. You with your commission and your posh accent, and your . . .'
With a kind of mock delicacy, Mac touched his own chest. 'Low friends. 
Officers' mess one night, back streets of Salford the next.
Equally at home or . . .' He smiled, relishing the intimacy of his capacity
to wound. 'Equally not at home, in both.'

'Whereas you of course are firmly embedded in the bosom of a
loving proletariat? Well, let me tell you, Mac, the part of the proletariat
I've been fighting with -- the vast majority -- they'd string you up from
the nearest fucking lamp-post and not think twice about it. And as for
your striking munition workers . . .' Prior swept the shed with a burst
of machine-gun fire.

There was a moment's shocked silence, as if the childish gesture had
indeed produced carnage.

'And don't think they wouldn't do it, they would. / know them.'

Mac said, 'I'm surprised you feel quite so much pleasure at the idea of
the workers shooting each other.'


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'No pleasure, Mac. Just facing reality.' Prior produced a flask from
his tunic pocket and handed it over. 'Here, wash it down.'

Mac unscrewed the cap, drank, blinked as his eyes watered, then
passed the flask back, its neck unwiped. After a moment's hesitation
Prior drank, thinking, as he did so, that the sacramental gesture was
hollow. Milk in unwiped lemonade bottles was a lifetime away.

'You still haven't explained,' Mac said.

'About the files? I work in the Intelligence Unit.'

Mac made a slight, involuntary movement.

'They'd've been here by now.'

Mac smiled. 'Must be quite nice, really. A foot on each side of the
fence. Long as you don't mind what it's doing to your balls.'

'They're all right, Mac. Worry about your own.'

'Oh, I see. I wondered when that was coming. Men fight, is that it?'

'No. I can see it takes courage to be a pacifist. At least, I suppose it
does. You see, my trouble is I don't know what courage means. The
only time I've ever done anything even slightly brave, I couldn't
remember a bloody thing about it. Bit like those men who bash the
wife's head in with a poker. "Everything went black, m'lud." '

Mac nodded. 'Well, since you're being honest, I think a load of
fucking rubbish's talked about how much courage it takes to be a
pacifist. When I was deported from the Clyde, they came for me in the
middle of the night. One minute I was dreaming about a blonde with
lovely big tits and the next minute I was looking up at six policemen
with lovely big truncheons. Anyway, they got me off to the station
and they started pushing me around, one to the other, you know, flat
of-the-hand stuff, and they were all grinning, sort of nervous grins, and
I knew what was coming, I knew they were working themselves up.
It's surprising how much working up the average man needs before
he'll do anything really violent. Well, you'd know all about that.'

'Yes,' Prior said expressionlessly.

'I was shitting meself. And then I thought, well. They're not going
to blind you. They're not going to shove dirty great pieces of hot
metal in your spine, they're not going to blow the top of your head
off, they're not going to amputate your arms and legs without an
anaesthetic, so what the fuck are you worried about? If you were in
France you'd be facing all that. And of course there's always the
unanswered question. Could you face it? Could you pass the test! But
where I think we differ, Billy, is that you think that's a Very Important
Question, and I think it's fucking trivial.'


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Prior glanced sideways at him. 'No, you don't.'

'All right, I don't.'

'You could always say you're showing moral courage.'

'No such thing. It's a bit like medieval trial-by-combat, you know.
In the end moral and political truths have to be proved on the body, because 
this mass of nerve and muscle and blood is what we are.'

'That's a very dangerous idea. It comes quite close to saying that the
willingness to suffer proves the Tightness of the belief. But it doesn't. The 
most it can ever prove is the believer's sincerity. And not always
that. Some people just like suffering.'

Mac was looking round the shed. He said, 'I don't think I do,' but he
seemed to have tired of the argument, or perhaps the whisky had
begun to soften his mood. 'I often think about those days.'

Prior waited. 'You can trust me, you know.'

'I trusted Spragge.'

'You didn't have pissing competitions with Spragge.'

'Oh, that's it, is it? Piss brothers?'

Prior laughed. 'Something like that.'

A long silence. 'What do you want?'

'I want you to tell me about Spragge.'

Mac gave a choking laugh. 'He's your fucking employee.'

'Not any more. The trial blew his cover."

'Good.'

'He was with you, wasn't he, the night before?'

'I sent him there.'

Mac must find that almost intolerable, Prior thought. His debt to
the Ropers was total. Without Beattie, he'd've been a scabby, lousy,
neglected kid, barely able to read and write, fit only for the drovers'
road and the slaughterhouse. Beattie had taken him in. By the age of
thirteen he'd been living more with her than with his own mother. As
soon as the older boys in the street gang stopped speculating about sex
and started climbing Lizzie's stairs in search of more concrete information,
Mac had found his own home unbearable. He'd disappeared
altogether for a time, going up the drovers' road one summer, returning,
older, harder, the first traces of cynicism and deadness round his
mouth and eyes. Then Beattie took charge. 'What the hell's the matter
with you?' she asked. 'You can read, can't you? Just 'cos the teachers
think you're stupid, doesn't mean you are. Some of them aren't too
bright. Here, read this. No, go on, read it. I want to know what you
think.'


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'He was after you, wasn't he?' Prior asked.

'Yes.'

'Do you think she meant to kill Lloyd George?'

'Nah. You know Beattie. She finds a spider in the sink, she gets a bit
of newspaper and puts it in the yard.'

'Hmm. I just wonder what she'd do if she found Lloyd George in
the sink.'

'Run the fucking taps.'

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

'Look, if there was anything, the idea came from Spragge. And I
think helping people escape from a detention centre sounds about
right. And Spragge had tried it on before.'

'Who with?'

'Charlie Greaves, Joe Haswell. He offered them explosives to blow
up a munitions factory. Said he knew where he could get some. Well,
for God's sake. They're not exactly lying around, are they? As soon as
they said no, he started backing off. Pretended he hadn't meant it.'

'And you still sent him to Beattie?'

'This is hindsight, man. It sticks in my mind now because of what
happened. At the time I just thought, oh God, another mad bugger.'

'Could you get them to write it down? With dates, if possible.'

'I don't even know where they are.'

'It's for Beattie, Mac.'

Mac let out a sharp breath. 'What do you want it for?'

'To discredit Spragge, of course.'

'They won't reopen the case.'

'Not publicly. But they might let her out. Quietly. She's going to
die in there, Mac. She won't last anywhere near ten years.'

A dragging silence.

'I'm not asking them to incriminate themselves. All they have to do
is say "He offered us explosives and we refused." '

'And you think they're going to be believed?'

'I think there's a better chance than you might think. There's a lot of
questions being asked about the way spies are used in munition factories.
Some of them are better at starting strikes than you are, Mac.'

'All right.' Mac stood up. 'It'll take a few weeks.'

'As long as that?'

'I've told you. I don!t know where they are.'

'Where can I contact you?'

Mac laughed. 'You fucking can't. Here, give me your address.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Prior took the notepad and pencil, and scribbled. 'All right?' 'Don't write to 
Hettie. The post's opened. And one more thing.'
Mac came very close, resting his hands heavily on Prior's shoulders. 'If
this is a trap, Billy, you're dead. I'm not a fucking Quaker, remember.'
For a moment the pressure on his shoulders increased, then Mac
turned and strode away.


Prior decided to take the short-cut home across the brick fields. This
patch of waste land always reminded him of France. Sump holes reflected
a dull gleam at the sky, tall grasses bent to the wind, pieces of
scrap metal rusted, rubbish stank, a rusting iron bedstead upreared
itself, a jagged black shape that, outlined against the horizon, would
have served as a landmark on patrol.

One of the ways in which he felt different from his brother officers,
one of the many, was that their England was a pastoral place: fields,
streams, wooded valleys, medieval churches surrounded by ancient
elms. They couldn't grasp that for him, and for the vast majority of the men, 
the Front, with its mechanization, its reduction of the individual
to a cog in a machine, its blasted landscape, was not a contrast
with the life they'd known at home, in Birmingham or Manchester or
Glasgow or the Welsh pit villages, but a nightmarish culmination.
'Equally not at home in either,' Mac had said. He was right.

Prior lingered a while, listening to the night noises, remembering
the evenings in his childhood when he'd sat on the stairs, unable to
sleep, until his father had come in and gone to bed, and he knew his
mother was safe. Engines rumbled, coughed, whistled, hissed. Trucks
shunted along, bumpers clanged together. A few streets away a drunk
started singing: There's an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean.'

He ought to be getting back. He'd already been away much longer
than he'd meant. He began walking rapidly across the brick fields. One
moment he was striding confidently along and the next he was falling,
sliding rather, down a steep slope into pitch-black. He lay on his back
at the muddy bottom of the hole and saw the tall weeds wave against
the sky. He wasn't hurt, but the breath had been knocked out of him.
Gradually, his heart stopped thumping. The stars looked brighter down
here, just as they did in a trench. He reached out for something to hold
on to, and his groping fingers encountered a sort of ledge. He patted
along it and then froze. It was a firestep. It couldn't be, but it was.
Disorientated and afraid, he felt further and encountered a hole, and
then another beside it, and another: funk holes, scooped out of the


307
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


clay. He was in a trench. Even as his mind staggered, he was groping for
an explanation. Boys played here. Street gangs. They must have been
digging for months to get as deep as this. But then probably the trench
was years old, as old as the real trenches, perhaps. He clambered out,
over what he suspected was No Man's Land, and there, sure enough,
were the enemy lines.

Smiling to himself, unwilling to admit how deeply the bizarre incident
had shocked him, he walked on, more cautiously now, and
reached the railings at the far side. He was trembling. He had to hold
on to the railings to steady himself.

The shock made him rebellious. He decided he wouldn't go straight
home after all. Witnessing these nasty little rows between his parents
did them no good, and him a great deal of harm. The time had come
to call a halt. He would go to the pub. Which pub? His way home
took him past the Rose and Crown, whose brass door flashed to and
fro, letting out great belches of warm beery air. He would go there.
He would do what other men do who come home on leave. Get drunk
and forget.

He was greeted by a fug of human warmth, so hot he felt the skin
on his nose tingle as the pores opened. He stood looking round at the
flushed and noisy faces, and in the far corner spotted Mrs Thorpe and
Mrs Riley with a great gaggle of other women. He decided he ought
to stand them a drink. After all, they'd stood him many a drink in their
day. A cry of recognition greeted him as he approached, and the whole
boozy crowd of them opened up and took him in.

Two hours later Harry Prior was stumbling home, gazing in bleary
appreciation at the full moon, riding high and magnificent in the clear
sky. He paused on the bridge that spanned the canal to take a quick
leak and admire the view. The moon was reflected in the water. He
looked down at it, as a jet of hot piss hit the wall and trickled satisfyingly
between the cobbles, and wondered why it should be hobbling
up and down. He checked to see the real moon was behaving itself,
then peered more closely at its reflection.

It wasn't the bloody moon at all, it was an arse. My God, the lad was
going at it. Harry had half a mind to cheer him on, but then he
thought, no, better not. A person might very easily be mistaken for a
peeping Tom. He leant further over, pressing himself against the rough
granite, wishing he could see more. All he could see of the woman was
knees. Who the bloody hell wants to watch a male arse bobbing up
and down? Bloody golf-balls. Still, it didn't half give you ideas. Bugger


308
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all doing at home, knees glued together. He rubbed himself against the
wall for comfort, then wandered disconsolately on.

'There's somebody on the bridge.'

Prior turned, but he couldn't see anything. He listened to the fading
footsteps. 'They're going.'

She'd gone tense and braced herself against him. He'd have to start
from the beginning. He kissed her mouth, her nose, her hair, and then,
lowering his head in pure delight, feeling every taboo in the whole
fucking country crash round his ears, he sucked Mrs Riley's breasts.


309
m
Part Two
TEN


Prior returned to London to find the city sweltering in sticky, humid,
thundery heat. Major Lode was more difficult than ever, and not
merely because of the weather. An attempt was under way to centralize
the intelligence services under the control of the War Office, and
Lode was fighting for the survival of the unit. The change was being
pushed through at an exalted level and very little filtered down to
Prior, but he observed Lode daily becoming fiercer, the blue eyes
more vulnerable, the moustache in ever greater need of protective
dabbings and strokings, as his empire collapsed around him. The files,
'the brain cells of the unit' Lode proclaimed (God help it, thought
Prior), were to be transferred to the War Office. The task of 'tidying
them up' before they were transferred was allotted to Prior. At first
he took this to be merely a routine clerical task, perhaps designed to
keep him out of trouble, but it quickly became clear that Lode wanted
'sensitive material' referred to him. In other words, evidence for the
worst of the unit's cock-ups was to be removed. The job, though
huge - the files numbered more than eight hundred - suited Prior
very well, since it solved what had hitherto been his main problem:
how to get enough access to past files to compile a dossier on
Spragge.

He was busy and, within reason, happy, though he did not feel
particularly well. Then, four days after his return, something disturbing
happened.

He'd gone out to lunch in a nearby pub, bought himself a pint of
beer and opened The Times, as he always did, at the casualty lists. The
name leapt out at him.

Hore, Captain James Frederick. Killed in action on the $th April, dearly
beloved younger son . . .

Jimmy Hore. They'd met on a riding course, trotting round a ring
with their stirrups crossed in front of them, their hands clasped behind
their heads. Acquiring the correct seat. The seat of gentlemen. Prior,
who'd already experienced the realities of trench warfare, had been
angry and amused, though he kept both reactions to himself, since he


3U
THE EYE IN THE DOOR

was convinced nobody else could appreciate the idiocy of the situation
as he did. Certainly not this blank-faced moron trotting towards him,
but then, as they trotted past each other, he caught Jimmy's eye and
realized his face wasn't blank at all, but rigid with suppressed laughter.
That glance of shared amusement had been too much for Jimmy, who
burst out laughing and fell off his horse.

Prior looked round the pub. Prosperous-looking men in pinstriped
suits jostled at the bar, chinking coins, bestowing well-oiled smiles on
the pretty, chestnut-haired barmaid. And Jimmy was dead. All the
poor little bugger had ever wanted to do was get married to ...
whatever her name was. And work in a bank. Prior would have liked
nothing better, at that moment, than for a tank to come crashing
through the doors and crush everybody, the way they sometimes
crushed the wounded who couldn't get off the track in time. The
violence of his imaginings -- he saw severed limbs, heard screams --
terrified him.

He couldn't eat. He would just drink up and go. But when he lifted
his glass, his attention was caught by the amber lights winking in the
beer. Sunlight, shining through the glass, cast a ring of shimmering
gold on the surface of the table that danced when his hand moved. He
started to play with it, moving his hand to and fro.

He was back at his desk. No interval. One second he was in the pub,
the next sitting behind his desk. He looked across at the closed door.
Blinked. Thought, I must've gone to sleep. He felt relaxed, but without
the clogged feeling that follows midday sleep. He'd been reading The
Times . . . Jimmy Hore was dead. He couldn't remember leaving the
pub. He must have walked all the way back in a complete dream. He
looked at his watch, and his brain struggled to make sense of the
position of the hands. Ten past four.

Three hours had passed since he broke for lunch, and of that he could
account for perhaps twenty to twenty-five minutes. The rest was blank.


He made himself work until six. After all, in France he'd done paperwork
on a table that kept jumping several feet into the air. He could
surely manage to ignore a little disturbance like this. Though, as file
after file passed across his desk, he was aware, somewhere on the
fringes of his consciousness, that it was not 'a little disturbance'. Something
catastrophic had happened.

Shortly after six he thought he recognized voices, and went out of
his room and a little way along the corridor. Major Lode and Lionel


3H
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Spragge were deep in conversation by the lifts. It was not possible to
hear what they were saying, but he noticed that Lode shook Spragge's
hand warmly as the lift arrived. Prior slipped back into his room, but
left the door open.

He was ready to produce some small query that would bring Lode
into his room, but in the event he didn't need to. Lode stood in the
doorway, grinning. 'Just seen Spragge,' he said in his clipped, staccato
voice. 'What have you been doing to him?'

The? Nothing.'

'Says you offered him a job.'

'I didn't offer him anything. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.'

'Well, he certainly seems to think you did. I had to tell him there was
nothing doing. Nap/wo.' Lode looked at him for a moment, then said
in a menacing, nannyish singsong, 'He's got it in for you.'

Bastard, Prior thought, as Lode closed the door behind him. It's not
my fault your frigging unit's being closed down.

Towards six it began to thunder, a desultory grumble on the horizon,
though the sun still shone. Prior worked for a further half hour, then
gave up. He'd been having bad headaches ever since he got back to
London and blamed them on the weather, though in fact he knew
they'd started after his fall into the children's trench. He would go
somewhere fairly reasonable to eat. Cosset himself.

A sudden downpour began just as he reached the main steps. He
looked up, trying to judge how long it would last. A white sun shone
through a thin layer of cloud, but there were darker clouds massing
over Nelson's Column. He went back upstairs to fetch his greatcoat.
As he passed Lode's room, he heard an unfamiliar voice say, 'Do you
think he believed it?'

Lode replied, 'Oh, I think so. I don't see why he shouldn't.'

Prior went along to his own room, shrugged himself into the heavy
greatcoat, and walked back to the lift. For once it arrived immediately
in a great clanking of cables and gates. He told himself there was no
reason to connect the overheard conversation with himself, but he
found it difficult not to. The atmosphere in the unit was rather like
that. Plots and counterplots, many of them seemingly pointless. So far
he'd managed to hold himself aloof.

The underground was crowded. Currents of hot, dead air moved
across his face as he waited on the edge of the platform. He couldn't
carry his greatcoat -- that was forbidden -- and the sweat streamed
down his sides. He found himself wondering whether this reaction was


3i5
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


not excessive, whether he was not really ill. A subterranean rumbling,
and the train erupted from the tunnel. He found himself a seat near the
door and glanced at the girl beside him. Her hair was limp, her neck
had a creased, swollen whiteness, and yet she was attractive in her
rumpled skirt and white blouse. He glanced at her neckline, at the
shadow between her breasts, then forced himself to look away. He
found that rumpled look in women amazingly attractive.

He ate at a small cafe not far from Marble Arch. It wasn't as pleasant
as it had looked from the outside: the walls had faded to a sallow beige,
the windows streamed with condensation, blasts of steamy air belched
from the swing doors into the kitchen as waitresses banged in and out.
After his meal he lit a cigarette, drank two cups of hot, sweet, orange
coloured tea and persuaded himself he felt better.

A twisting flight of stairs led down to his basement flat. The dustbins
from all the apartments in the house were kept in the small
forecourt outside his living-room window. The smell of rotting cabbage 
lingered. At night there were rustlings that he tried to convince
himself were cats. He put his key in the lock and walked in. The hall
was dark, but not cool. He threw his briefcase and coat down on to a
chair, then, pulling his tie off, went along the corridor to the bathroom,
ran a cold bath and nerved himself to get in. His skin under
the water looked bloated, and there were lines of silver bubbles trapped
in his pubic hair. He ran his fingers through, releasing them, then
clasped the edges of the bath and lowered his head beneath the water.

He got out, wrapped himself in a towel, opened the french windows
into the small yard and lay down on the bed. Despite the open windows
there was no decrease in stuffiness. The only way you could get a
movement of air through the place was to have the french windows and the front 
door open. But then you let the smell of cabbage in as
well.

His head was aching. He turned and looked at the photograph of
Sarah by his bed. She was sitting on the bottom step of some kind of
monument, younger, plump, though not fat, with her hair dressed low
so that it almost covered her forehead. She was pretty, but he thought
she looked more ordinary than she did now, when her cheekbones had
become more prominent, and she wore her hair back from the high
rounded forehead. Her smile was different too. In the photograph it
looked friendly, confiding, almost puppyish. Now, though still warm,
it always kept something back. She was coming to see him sometime
in the next few weeks, or at least it seemed almost certain that she was.


316
THE FYF, IN THE DOOR


He was afraid to count on it. He was afraid to picture her in the flat,
because he knew that if he did the emptiness when her imagined
presence failed him would be intolerable.

What he needed was to get out. These days he tried to circumvent
the nightmares by going for a long walk early in the evening and then
having three very large whiskies before bed. He'd reluctantly come to
the conclusion that Rivers was right: sleeping draughts stopped working
after the first few weeks, and when they stopped the nightmares
returned with redoubled force. At least with the walk and the whisky
he could count on a few good hours before they started.

Walking the city streets on a hot evening, he seemed to feel the
pavements and the blank, white terraces breathe the day's stored heat
into his face. His favourite walks were in Hyde Park. He liked the
dusty gloom beneath the trees, the glint of the Serpentine in the distance.
Close to, by the water's edge, there was even the whisper of a breeze. He 
stopped and watched some children paddling, three little girls
with their dresses tucked into their drawers, then switched his attention
to two much bigger girls, who came strolling along, arm in arm, but
they read the hunger in his eyes too clearly and hurried past, giggling.

He felt restless, and, for once, the restlessness had nothing to do with
sex. He had a definite and very strange sensation of wanting to be somewhere, a 
specific place, and of not knowing what that place was.
He began to stroll towards the Achilles Monument. This was a frequent
objective on his evening walks, for no particular reason except that its
heroic grandeur both attracted and repelled him. It seemed to embody
the same unreflecting admiration of courage that he found in 'The
Charge of the Light Brigade', a poem that had meant a great deal to
him as a boy, and still did, though what it meant had become considerably
more complex. He stared up at the stupendous lunging figure,
with its raised sword and shield, and thought, not for the first time,
that he was looking at the representation of an ideal that no longer had
validity.

Feeling dissatisfied, as if he'd expected the walk to end in something
more than this routine encounter with Achilles, he turned to go, and
noticed a man staring at him from under the shadow of the trees.
We-ell. Young men who linger in the park at dusk can expect to be
stared at. Deliberately, he quickened his pace, but then the back of his
neck began to prickle, and a second later he heard his name called.

Lionel Spragge came lumbering up to him, out of breath and
plaintive. 'Where are you going?' he demanded.


317
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Home.'

At that moment a gang of young people, five or six abreast, came
charging along the path, arms linked, broke round Spragge like a river
round a stone, and swept on. Two more boys, running to catch up,
elbowed him out of the way. Under cover of this disturbance, Prior
walked away.

'Hey, hang on.' Spragge came puffing up behind him. 'You can't
just go walking off like that.'

'Why not?'

Spragge tapped his watch. 'Achilles. Nine o'clock.'

'Well?'

Spragge looked genuinely bewildered. 'Why make the appointment
if you don't want to talk?'

Prior was beginning to feel frightened. 'I came out for a walk.'

'You came to see me.'

'Did I? I don't think so.'

'You know you did.' He stared at Prior. 'Well, if this doesn't take the
biscuit. You said, "I can't talk now. Statue of Achilles, nine o'clock."
What's the point of denying it? I mean what is the pointT

Spragge stank. His shirt was dirty, there was three days' growth of
stubble on his chin, he'd been drinking, his eyes were bloodshot, but the
bewilderment was genuine.

Prior said, 'Well, I'm here now anyway. What do you want?'

'If you hadn't turned up I'd've come to your house.'

'You don't know where I live.'

'I do. I followed you home.'

Prior laughed. A bark of astonishment.

'I was behind you on the platform. I sat three seats away from you
on the train.' Spragge waggled his finger at his temple. 'You want to
watch that. First step to the loony bin.'

'Piss off

Spragge caught his arm. 'Don't you want to know what I've got to
say?'

'Not particularly.'

'Yes, you do,' Spragge said confidingly, leaning close, breathing
into his face. 'Come on. Sit down.'

They found a place. At the other end of the bench an elderly woman
sat, feeding a squirrel on nuts. Prior watched the animal's tiny black
hands turning the nut delicately from side to side. 'Make it quick, will

you?'


3i8
THE EYE IN The H F DOOR


'I've remembered where I saw you.'

'Have you?'

'Meeting in Liverpool. You were speaking for the war, your father
was speaking against.'

'Get to the point.'

'Oh, I know a lot about you. It's amazing what you can find out
when you try, and finding out things was my job, wasn't it? When I
had a job.'

'You didn't find things out,' Prior said crisply. 'You made them up.'

'You and the Ropers. You were like this.' Spragge jabbed his crossed
fingers into Prior's face. 'Thick as thieves. And MacDowell.'

'That's why I got the job.'

'Oh, yeh, chuck me out and push you in.'

'I came a year after you left.'

'You told me I'd got a job.'

'No, I didn't.'

'Yes, you did. I went straight back home and told the wife. And
then when I didn't hear anything I went to see Lode, and he threw me
out. Bloody laughed at me.' Spragge turned his downwards-slanting
turquoise eyes on Prior. 'You were just pumping me. Trying to make
out I put the old cunt up to it.'

Prior got up. 'Wash your mouth out.'

'I thought that'd get you. You and her, you were --'

Prior crossed his fingers. 'Like this?'

Spragge stared at him, a vein standing out at his temple, like a worm
under the clammy skin. 'People don't change.'

'No, I agree, they don't. I was a socialist then, I'm a socialist now. As
far as the war goes, I don't have to prove my patriotism to you. I didn't
offer you a job. I'm sorry if you told your wife I did, but that's your
responsibility, not mine. Now bugger off and leave me alone.'

Prior walked away. He was aware of Spragge shouting, but was too
angry to hear what he said. He thought Spragge might follow him,
and that if he did there would be a fight. Spragge was taller, but older
and flabbier. And he didn't care anyway. He wanted a fight. Spragge's
face floated in front of him: the slightly bulbous nose, the sheen of
sweat, the enlarged pores around the nostrils, the tufts of grey hair
protruding from them. He'd never experienced such intense awareness
of another person's body before, except in sex. What he felt was not
simple dislike, but an intimate, obsessive, deeply physical hatred.

Back in the flat he rinsed his face in cold water and, trembling


3i9
Tslightly, lay down on the bed. He plumped the pillows up behind him
and groped in the pocket of his tunic for a cigarette. Weren't any.
Then he remembered he'd been wearing his greatcoat. He got up,
checked the pockets and found a packet of cigars. He didn't smoke
cigars. But he must have bought them, and either smoked or offered
them to somebody else, because there were two missing from the pack.    ^


Just as he must have arranged to meet Spragge. Spragge wouldn't have
lied about that. It was too blatant, too easily discounted. No, he'd
made the appointment all right. God knows when, or why.

He got up from the bed, feeling the palms of his hands sticky. He
went to the front door and locked it, then stood with his back to it,
looking down the dark corridor to the half-open door of his bedroom,
feeling a momentary relief at being locked in, though he quickly
realized this was nonsense. Whatever it was he needed to be afraid of, it
was on this side of the door.


H F. F, YE IN The H F DOOR



ELEVEN


After a pause, Rivers asked, 'Have there been any further episodes
since then?'

'Yes, but I don't think any of them involved other people. I don't think they 
did.' Prior's mouth twisted. 'How would I know?'

'Nobody's said anything?'

'No.'

'How many?'

'Seven.'

'As many as that'?'

Prior looked away.

'How long do they last?'

'Longest, three hours. Shortest ... I don't know. Twenty minutes?
The long ones are frightening because you don't know what you've
done . . .' He attempted a laugh. 'You just know you've had plenty of
time to do it.'

'I don't think you should assume you've done anything wrong.'

'Don't you? Well, if it's so bloody good, why do I need to forget it?'

Rivers waited a while. 'What do you think you might have done?'


320
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'I don't know, do I? Nipped across to Whitechapel and ripped up a
few prostitutes.'

Silence.

'Look,' Prior said, with the air of one attempting to engage the
village idiot in rational discourse, 'you know as well as I do that that
. . .' He flung himself back in his chair. 'I'm not going to do this, I just
refuse.'

Rivers waited.

Still not looking at him, Prior said, or rather chanted, 'I have certain
impulses which I do not give way to except in strict moderation and at the 
other person's request. At least, in this state I don't. I'm simply
pointing out that in the the the the other state I might not be so fucking 
scrupulous. And don't look at me like that.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You think this is a load of self-dramatizing rubbish, don't you?'

Rivers said carefully, 'I think you've been alone with the problem
too long.'

'There's nothing ridiculous in anything I've said.'

Rivers looked at the pale, proud, wintry face and caught a sigh. 'I
certainly wouldn't call it ridiculous.'

'The fact is I don't know and neither do you, so you're in no
position to pontificate.'

Silence. Rivers said, 'How are the nightmares?'

'Bad. Oh, I had one you'll like. I was was walking along a path in a
kind of desert and straight ahead of me was an eyeball. Not this size.'
Prior's cheeks twitched like boiling porridge. 'Huge. And alive. And it
was directly in front of me and I knew this time it was going to get
me.' He smiled. 'Do whatever it is eyeballs do. Fortunately, there was
a river running along beside the path, so I leapt into the river and I was
all right.' He gazed straight at Rivers. 'But then I suppose all your
patients jump into fucking rivers sooner or later, don't they?'

The antagonism was startling. They might have been back at
Craiglockhart, at the beginning of Prior's treatment. 'How did you
feel about being in the river?'

'Fine. It sang to me, a sort of lullaby, it kept telling me I was
going to be all right and I was all right - as long as I stayed in the
river.'

'You didn't feel you wanted to get out?'

'In the dream? No. Now, YES.'

Rivers spread his hands. 'Your coming here is entirely voluntary.'


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'With that degree of dependency? Of course it's not fucking voluntary.'
He started to say something else and bit it back. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be, there's no need.' Suddenly Rivers leant across the desk.
'I'm not here to be liked.'

'I am sorry,' Prior said, his face and voice hardening. 'I thought I was
supposed to be accepting my emotions? Well, my emotion is that I'm
sorry.'

'In that case I accept your apology.'

A pause. 'Do you know what I do when I come round from one of
these spells? I look at my hands because I half expect to see them
covered in hair.'

Rivers made no comment.

'You've readjekyll and Hyde?'

'Yes.' Rivers had been waiting for the reference. Patients who suffered
from fugue states invariably referred to the dissociated state jocularly,
but not without fear - as 'Hyde'. 'In real life, you know, the
fugue state is -- well, I was going to say "never", but, in fact, there is
one case -- is almost never the darker side of the personality. Usually
it's no more than a difference in mood.'

'But we don't know. You see, the conversation I'm trying not to
have is the one where I point out that you could find out in five
minutes flat and you say, "Yes, I know, but I won't do it."'

Silence.

'Well?'

'I'm sorry, I thought you said you didn't want that conversation.'

'You know, for somebody who isn't here to be liked you have the
most wonderful manner. You used hypnosis at Craiglockhart.'

'Yes, but in that case we could check the memory. You see, one of
the things people who believe in ... the extensive use of hypnosis
claim - well, they don't even claim it, they assume it - is that memories
recovered in that way are genuine memories. But they're very often
not. They can be fantasies, or they can be responses to suggestions
from the therapist. Because one's constantly making suggestions, and
the ones you're not aware of making -- not conscious of -- are by far
the most powerful. And that's dangerous because most therapists are
interested in dissociated states and so they - unconsciously of
course -- encourage the patient further down that path. And one
can't avoid doing it. Even if one excludes everything else, there's still
the enlargement of the pupils of the eyes.'

Prior leant forward and peered. 'Yours are enlarged.'


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Rivers took a deep breath. 'You can get your memory back by the
same methods we used at Craiglockhart. You were very good at it.'

'Is that why you do this?' Prior swept his hand down across his eyes.

Rivers smiled. 'No, of course not, it's just a habit. Eye-strain. Now
can we --'

'No, that's not true. If it was eye-strain, you'd do it at random and
you don't. You do it when . . . when something touches a nerve. Or or
... It 15 a way of hiding your feelings. You've just said it yourself, the
eyes are the one part you can't turn into wallpaper - and so you cover
them up.'

Rivers found this disconcerting. He tried to go on with what he'd
been going to say, and realized he'd lost the train of thought. After so
many hours of probing, manipulating, speculating, provoking, teasing,
Prior had finally -- and almost casually -- succeeded. He couldn't ignore
this; it had to be dealt with. 'I think ... if as you say it isn't random and
I don't know because it's not something I'm aware of-- it's probably
something to do with not wanting to see the patient. For me the
patient's expressions and gestures aren't much use, because I have no
visual memory, so I think perhaps I stop myself seeing him as a way of
concentrating on what he's saying. All right? Now perhaps we can --'

'No visual memory at all?'

'None at all.'

'I don't see how you think.'

'Well, I suspect you're a very visual person. Could we --'

'Have you always been like this?'

Rivers thought, all right. He stood up and indicated to Prior that
they should exchange seats. Prior looked surprised and even uneasy,
but quickly recovered and sat down in Rivers's chair with considerable
aplomb. Rivers saw him look round the study, taking in his
changed perspective on the room. 'Isn't this against the rules?' he
asked.

'I can't think of a single rule we're not breaking.'

'Can't you?' Prior said, smiling his delicate smile. 'I can.'

'I'm going to show you how boring this job is. When I was five

Prior shifted his position, leant forward, rested his chin on his clasped
hands, and said, in meltingly empathic tones, 'Yes? Go on.'

Rivers was not in fact breaking the rules. He intended to do no
more than offer Prior an illustration from his own experience that he'd
already used several times in public lectures, but he hadn't reckoned on
doing it while confronted by a caricature of himself. 'One of the


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expressions of having no visual memory is that I can't remember the
interior of any building I've ever been in. I can't remember this
house when I'm not in it. I can't remember Craiglockhart, though I
lived there for over a year. I can't remember St John's, though I've
lived there twenty years, but there is one interior I do remember
and that's a house in Brighton I lived in till I was five. I can remember part 
of that. The basement kitchen, the drawing-room, the
dining-room, my father's study, but I can't remember anything at
all about upstairs. And I've come to believe -- I won't go into the
reasons -- that something happened to me on the top floor that was
so terrible that I simply had to forget it. And in order to ensure that
I forgot I suppressed not just the one memory, but the capacity to
remember things visually at all.' Rivers paused, and waited for a
response.

'You were raped,' Prior said. 'Or beaten.'

Rivers's face went stiff with shock. 'I really don't think I was.'

'No, well, you wouldn't, would you? The whole point is it's too
terrible to contemplate.'

Rivers said something he knew he'd regret, but he had to say it.
'This was my father's vicarage.'

'I was raped in a vicarage once.'

It was on the tip of Rivers's tongue to say that no doubt Prior had
been 'raped' in any number of places, but he managed to restrain
himself. 'When I said terrible I meant to a child of that age. I was five
remember. Things happen to children which are an enormous shock to
the child, but which wouldn't seem terrible or or or even particularly
important to an adult.'

'And equally things happen to children which are genuinely terrible.
And would be recognized as terrible by anybody at any age.'

'Yes, of course. How old were you?'

'Eleven. I wasn't meaning myself

'You don't classify that as "terrible"?'

'No. I was receiving extra tuition.' He gave a yelping laugh. 'God,
was I receiving extra tuition. From the parish priest, Father Mackenzie.
My mother offered him a shilling a week -- more than she could afford
-- but he said, "Don't worry, my good woman, I have seldom seen a
more promising boy.'" He added irritably, 'Don't look so shocked,
Rivers.'

'I am shocked.'

'Then you shouldn't be. He got paid in kind, that's all.' Suddenly


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Prior leant forward and grasped Rivers's knee, digging his fingers in
round the kneecap. 'Everything has to be paid for, doesn't it?' He
grasped the knee harder. 'Doesn't it?'

'No.'

Prior let go. 'This terrible-in-big-black-inverted-commas thing that
happened to you, what do you think it was?'

'I don't know. Dressing-gown on the back of a door?'

'As bad as that? Oh, my God.'

Rivers pressed on in defiance of Prior's smile. 'I had a patient once
who became claustrophobic as the result of being accidentally locked
in a corridor with a fierce dog. Or it seemed fierce to him. In that '

'Oh, I see. Even the bloody dog wasn't really fierce.'

'In that case his parents didn't even know it had happened.'

'You say you were five when this. . . non-event didn't happen?'

'Yes.'

'How old were you when you started to stammer?'

'Fiive.'

Prior leant back in Rivers's chair and smiled. 'Big dog.'

'I didn't mean to imply there was --'

'For God's sake. Whatever it was, you blinded yourself so you
wouldn't have to go on seeing it.'

'I wouldn't put it as dramatically as that.'

'You destroyed your visual memory. You put your mind's eye out. Is that what 
happened, or isn't it?'

Rivers struggled with himself. Then said simply, 'Yes.'

'Do you ever think you're on the verge of remembering?'

'Sometimes.'

'And what do you feel?'

'Fear.' He smiled. 'Because the child's emotions are still attached to
the memory.'

'We're back to the dressing-gown.'

'Yes. Yes. I'm afraid we are, because I do sincerely believe it may be
as simple as that.'

'Then one can only applaud,' Prior said, and did. Three loud claps.

'You know . . .' Rivers hesitated and started again. 'You must be
wary of filling the gaps in your memory with . . . with monsters. I
think we all tend to do it. As soon as we're left with a blank, we start
projecting our worst fears on to it. It's a bit like the guide for medieval
map-makers, isn't it? Where unknown, there place monsters. But I do
think you should try not to do it, because what you're really doing is


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subjecting yourself to a constant stream of suggestion of of a very
negative kind.'

'All right. I'll try not to. I'll substitute the Rivers guide to mapmaking:
Where unknown, there place dressing-gowns. Or just possibly, dogs. Here, have 
your chair back.' Prior settled himself back into the
patient's chair, murmuring, 'Do you know, Rivers, you're as neurotic
as I am? And that's saying quite a lot.'

Rivers rested his chin on his hands. 'How do you feel about that?'

'Oh, my God, we are back to normal. You mean, "Do I feel a nasty,
mean-spirited sense of triumph?" No. I'm mean-spirited enough, I'm
just not stupid enough.' Prior brooded a moment. 'There's one thing
wrong with the Rivers guide to map-making. Suppose there really are
monsters?'

'I think if there are, we'll meet them soon enough.'

Prior looked straight at Rivers. 'I'm frightened.'

'I know.'


When Prior finally left - it had been a long, exhausting session Rivers
switched off the desk lamp, went to sit in his armchair by the
fire, and indulged in some concentrated, unobserved eye-rubbing. Did he do it 
'when something touched a nerve'? It was possible, he supposed.
If there was a pattern, Prior would certainly have spotted it. On
the other hand, Prior was equally capable of making the whole thing up.

He didn't regret the decision to give Prior what he'd always claimed
he wanted -- to change places -- because in the process he'd discovered
an aspect of Prior that mightn't have been uncovered in any other
way. Not so much the 'extra tuition' -- though that was interesting,
particularly in view of Prior's habit of aggressive flirtation -- as the
assumption that Rivers's loss of visual memory must have some totally
traumatic explanation. That had revealed more about Prior than he
was aware of.

Though Prior had been a formidable interrogator. Whatever it was,
you blinded yourself so you wouldn't have to go on seeing if ... You put your
mind's eye out. Simply by being rougher than any professional colleague
would ever have been, Prior had brought him face to face with the full
extent of his loss. People tended to assume he didn't know what he'd
lost, but that wasn't true. He did know, or glimpsed at least. Once, in
the Torres Straits, he'd attended a court held by the British official in
collaboration with the native chiefs, and an old woman had given
evidence about a dispute in which she was involved. As she spoke,


326
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she'd glanced from side to side, clearly reliving every detail of the
events she was describing, and very obviously seeing people who were
not present in court. And he had looked at her, this scrawny, half
naked, elderly, illiterate woman, and he had envied her. No doubt he'd
encountered Europeans who had visual memories of equal power, but
his own deficiency had never before been brought home to him with
such force.

It was a loss, and he had long been aware of it, though he had been
slow to connect it with the Brighton house experience. Slower still to
recognize that the impact of the experience had gone beyond the loss
of visual memory and had occasioned a deep split between the rational,
analytical cast of his mind and his emotions. It was easy to overstate
this: he had, after all, been subject to a form of education which is
designed to inculcate precisely such a split, but he thought the division
went deeper in him than it did in most men. It was almost as if the
experience -- whatever it was -- had triggered an attempt at dissociation
of personality, though, mercifully, not a successful one. Still, he had
been, throughout most of his life, a deeply divided man, and though
he would once have said that this division exercised little, if any,
influence on his thinking, he had come to believe it had determined the
direction of his research.

Many years after that initial unremembered experience, he and
Henry Head had conducted an experiment together. The nerve supplying
Head's left forearm had been severed and sutured, and then over a
period of five years they had traced the progress of regeneration. This
had taken place in two phases. The first was characterized by a high
threshold of sensation, though when the sensation was finally evoked it
was, to use Head's own word, 'extreme'. In addition to this all-or
nothing quality, the sensation was difficult to localize. Sitting blindfold
at the table, Head had been unable to locate the stimulus that was
causing him such severe pain. This primitive form of innervation they
called the protopathic. The second phase of regeneration -- which they
called the epicritic -- followed some months later, and was characterized
by the ability to make graduated responses and to locate the source of a
stimulus precisely. As the epicritic level of innervation was restored,
the lower, or protopathic, level was partially integrated with it and
partially suppressed, so that the epicritic system carried out two functions:
one, to help the organism adapt to its environment by supplying
it with accurate information; the other, to suppress the protopathic, to
keep the animal within leashed. Inevitably, as time went on, both


327
THE EYE IN THE DOOR

I

words had acquired broader meanings, so that 'epicritic' came to stand

for everything rational, ordered, cerebral, objective, while 'protopathic'
referred to the emotional, the sensual, the chaotic, the primitive.

In this way the experiment both reflected Rivers's internal divisions

and supplied him with a vocabulary in which to express them. He

might almost have said with Henry Jekyll, /( was on the moral side, and

in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive        
«

duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my

consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only 
because I

was radically both . . .

It was odd how the term 'Jekyll and Hyde' had passed into the
language, so that even people who had never read Stevenson's story
used the names as a shorthand for internal divisions. Prior spoke of
looking at his hands to make sure they had not been transformed into
the hairy hands of Hyde, and he was not alone in that. Every patient
Rivers had ever had who suffered from a fugue state sooner or later
referred to that state as 'Hyde', and generally this was a plea for
reassurance. In a hospital setting, where the fugue state could be observed,
such reassurance was easily given, but it was less easy to reassure
Prior. Partly because the fugue state couldn't be observed, but also
because Prior's sense of the darker side of his personality was unusually
strong. He might talk about being incapable of sexual guilt, but, Rivers
thought, he was deeply ashamed of his sadistic impulses, even frightened
of them. He believed there were monsters on his map, and who
was to say he was wrong?

There was one genuinely disturbing feature of the case: that odd
business of making an appointment in the fugue state and keeping it in
the normal state. It suggested the fugue state was capable of influencing
Prior's behaviour even when it was not present, in other words, that it
was functioning as a co-consciousness. Not that a dual personality need
develop even from that. He intended to make sure it didn't. There
would be no hypnosis, no artificial creation of dissociated states for
experimental purposes, no encouraging Prior to think of the fugue
state as an alternative self. Even so. It had to be remembered Prior was
no mere bundle of symptoms, but an extremely complex personality
with his own views on his condition. And his imagination was already
at work, doing everything it could to transform the fugue state into a
malignant double. He believed in the monsters - and whatever Rivers
might decide to do, or refrain from doing -- Prior's belief in them
would inevitably give them power.


328
THF EYE IN THF. DOOR


TWELVE


'Now I want you to draw me an elephant,' Head said.

His voice distorted, as if he were blowing bubbles in soapy water,
Lucas replied, 'Yeth ah seen dom. Up. Uvver end.'

He took the notepad and pencil, and began to draw. Rivers was
sitting beside Head, but neither of them spoke since Lucas's
concentration must not be disturbed. They had been doing the tests for
half an hour and Lucas was already tired. His tongue protruded between
his teeth, giving him the look of a small boy learning to read, except
that, in Lucas's case, the protrusion was permanent.

Rivers noticed Head looking at the shrapnel wound on Lucas's
shaved scalp, and knew he was thinking about the technical problems
of duplicating this on the skull of the cadaver he'd been working on
that morning. It was an interesting technique, Rivers thought. Head
measured the dimensions of the wound on the living patient, then
traced the outline on to the skull of a cadaver, drilled holes at regular
intervals around the outline, and introduced a blue dye into the holes.
The entire skull cap could then be lifted off and the brain structures
underlying the dyed area dissected and identified. In this way the area
of brain death could be correlated precisely with the nature of the
patient's language defects.

A laborious business, made more so by the need to duplicate the
wounds of two patients on every cadaver. One of the more surprising
consequences of the war was a shortage of suitable male corpses.

Rivers lifted his hands to his chin, smelling the medical school smell
of human fat and formaldehyde, only partially masked by carbolic
soap. He watched Head's expression as he looked at Lucas's shaved
scalp, and realized it differed hardly at all from his expression that
morning as he'd bent over the cadaver. For the moment, Lucas had
become simply a technical problem. Then Lucas looked up from his
task, and instantly Head's face flashed open in his transforming smile.
A murmur of encouragement, and Lucas returned to his drawing.
Head's face, looking at the ridged purple scar on the shaved head,
again became remote, withdrawn. His empathy, his strong sense of the
humanity he shared with his patients, was again suspended. A necessary
suspension, without which the practice of medical research, and indeed
of medicine itself, would hardly be possible, but none the less


329
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identifiably the same suspension the soldier must achieve in order to
kill. The end was different, but the psychological mechanism employed
to achieve it was essentially the same. What Head was doing, Rivers
thought, was in some ways a benign, epicritic form of the morbid
dissociation that had begun to afflict Prior. Head's dissociation was
healthy because the researcher and the physician each had instant access
to the experience of the other, and both had access to Head's experience
in all other areas of his life. Prior's was pathological because areas of his
conscious experience had become inaccessible to memory. What was
interesting was why Head's dissociation didn't lead to the kind of split
that had taken place in Prior. Rivers shifted his position, and sighed.
One began by finding mental illness mystifying, and ended by being
still more mystified by health.

Lucas had finished. Head leant across the desk and took the drawing
from him. 'Hmm,' he said, looking at the remarkably cow-like creature
in front of him. A long pause. 'What's an elephant got in front?'

Again the blurting voice, always on the verge of becoming a wail.
'He got a big' -- Lucas's good hand waved up and down -- 'straight
about a yard long.'

'Do you know what it's called?'

'Same what you. Drive. Water with.'

'Has he got a trunk?'

Lucas wriggled in his wheelchair and laughed. 'He lost it.'

He reached for his drawing, wanting to correct it, but Head slipped
it quickly into the file. 'Sums now.'

They went quickly through a range of simple sums. Lucas, whose
ability to understand numbers was unimpaired, got them predictably
right. It was Head's custom to alternate tasks the patient found difficult
or impossible with others that he could perform successfully. The next
task - designed to discover whether Lucas's understanding of 'right'
and 'left' was impaired -- involved his attempting to imitate movements
of Head's arms, first in a mirror and then facing him across the desk.

Rivers watched Head raise his left hand -- 'professional in shape and
size; . . . large, firm, white and comely' - and thought he probably
knew that hand better than any part of his own body. He'd experimented
on it for five years, after all, and even now could have traced
on to the skin the outline of the remaining area of protopathic innervation
-- for the process of regeneration is never complete. A triangle of
skin between the thumb and forefinger retained the primitive, all-or
nothing responses and remained abnormally sensitive to changes in


330
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


temperature. Sometimes, on a cold day, he would notice Head shielding
this triangle of skin beneath his other hand.

For a while, after the tests were complete, Head chatted to Lucas
about the results. It was Head's particular gift to be able to involve his
patients in the study of their own condition. Lucas's face, as Head
outlined the extent of his impairments, was alight with what one could
only call clinical interest. When, finally, an orderly appeared and
wheeled him out of the room, he was smiling.

'He has. . . improved,' Head said. 'Slightly.' He brushed his thinning
hair back from his forehead and for a moment looked utterly bleak.
'Tea?'

'I wouldn't mind a glass of milk.'

'Milk?'

Rivers patted his midriff. 'Keeps the ulcers quiet.'

'Why, are they protesting?'

'God, how I hate psychologists.'

Head laughed. Till get you the milk.'

Rivers glanced at The Times while he waited. In the Pemberton
Billing trial they'd reached the medical evidence - such as it was. As
Head came back into the room, Rivers read aloud: ' "Asked what
should be done with such people. Dr Serrel Cooke replied, 'They are
monsters. They should be locked up.'" The voice of psychological
medicine.'

Head handed him a cup. 'Put it down, Rivers.'

Rivers folded the paper. 'I keep trying to tell myself it's funny.'

'Well, it is, a lot of it. It was hilarious when that woman told the
Judge his name was in the Black Book.' He waited for a reply.
'Anyway, when do you want to see Lucas? Tomorrow?'

'Oh, I think we give the poor little blighter a rest, don't we?
Monday?'

They talked for a while about Lucas, then drifted into a rambling
conversation about the use of pacifist orderlies. The hospital contained
a great many paralysed patients in a building not designed to accommodate
them. There were only two lifts. The nurses and the existing
orderlies - men who were either disabled or above military age - did
their best, but the lives of patients were inevitably more restricted than
they need have been. What was desperately required was young male
muscle, and this the pacifist orderlies - recruited under the Home
Office scheme - supplied. But they also aroused hostility in the staff
obliged to work with them. It had now reached a point where it was


33i
THE EYE IN THF DOOR

f

doubtful whether the hospital could go on using them. The irrationality of 
getting rid of much needed labour exasperated Rivers, and he had
spoken out against it at the last meeting of the hospital management
committee, rather too forcefully, perhaps, or at least Head seemed to
think so. Tm not g-going b-back on it,' he said. 'I've spent m-most of
my 1-life t-t-toning down what I w-wanted to s-say. I'm not d-doing
it any more.'

Head looked at him. 'What happened to the gently flowing Rivers
we all used to know and love?'

'Went AWOL in Scotland. Never been seen since.'

'Yes.'

'Yes what?'

'Yes, that was my impression.'


The lift door was about to close. Rivers broke into a run, and Wantage,
one of the non-pacifist orderlies, clanged the gate open again. 'There
you are, sir,' he said, stepping back. 'Room for a thin one.'

He was returning a man in a wheelchair to the ward. Rivers squeezed
in beside the wheelchair and pressed the button for the top floor.

Wantage was the most popular of the orderlies, partly because his
built-up boot supplied an instant explanation for why he wasn't in
France. He was a fat, jolly man with a limitless capacity for hate. He
hated skivers, he hated shirkers, he hated conchies, he hated the Huns,
he hated the Kaiser. He loved the war. He had the gentlest hands in the
hospital. He would have given anything to be able to go and fight.
Whenever Rivers saw him lurching along behind a wheelchair, he was
reminded of the crippled boy in the Pied Piper story, left behind when
the other children went into the mountain.

At the second floor the lift stopped and a young nurse got in.
Viggors, the patient in the wheelchair, spoke to her, blushing slightly she
was evidently a great favourite -- and then sat, slumped to one side,
his eyes level with her waist, gazing covertly at her breasts. Wantage
chattered on. On the third floor the lift stopped again and Wantage
pushed the wheelchair out.

Rivers was left wishing he hadn't seen that look. Every day in this
hospital one was brutally reminded that the worst tragedies of the war
were not marked by little white crosses.

For safety reasons -- his patients were mobile and could use the fire
escapes -- both his wards were on the top floor. The hospital had been
built as a children's hospital; the top floor had been the nursery and the


332
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


walls were decorated with Baa-baa Black Sheep, Little Go Peep, Red
Riding Hood, Humpty-Dumpty. The windows were barred. On his
arrival Rivers had asked for these bars to be removed, but the War
Office refused to pay for any alterations beyond the absolute minimum:
the provision of adult-size baths and lavatories. Not washbasins. Lawrence
was there now, shaving in a basin that barely reached his knees.
The eye, deprived of normal perspective, saw him as a giant. No
amount of experience seemed to correct the initial impression.

Rivers collected his overnight key from sister and walked along the
corridor to his own room. The room was vast, with a huge bay
window overlooking Vincent Square. He went through into the adjoining
room and asked his secretary to send Captain Manning in.

Manning had been admitted because the anxiety attacks he'd suffered
ever since his return from France had become more severe, partly as a
result of his obsession with the Pemberton Billing affair. Rivers would
have liked to tell him to ignore the trial for the farrago of muckraking
nonsense it was, but that was not possible. Manning had been sent a
newspaper cutting about Maud Allan and the 'cult of the clitoris'.
More recently he'd received a copy of the 47,000 article. Manning
was being targeted, presumably by someone who knew he was a
homosexual, and he could hardly be expected to ignore that.

'Have you been waiting long?' Rivers asked.

'Couple of minutes.'

Manning looked tired. No doubt last night had been spent dreading
coming into hospital. 'How are you settling in?'

'All right. I've been given a room to myself. I didn't expect that.'

'Have you brought the article with you?' Rivers asked.

Manning handed it over. It was not, as Rivers had been assuming, a
newspaper cutting, but a specially produced copy, printed on to thick
card. At the top -- typewritten -- was the message: In the hope that this
will awaken your conscience.

'Did you read it at the time?' Manning asked. 'When it first came
out?'

'No.' Rivers smiled faintly. 'A pleasure postponed.'


AS I SEE IT - THE FIRST 47,OOO


Harlots on the Wall

There have been given many reasons why England is prevented from

putting her full strength into the War. On several occasions in the columns


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


of the Imperialist I have suggested that Germany is making use of subtle but
successful means to nullify our effort. Hope of profit cannot be the only
reason for our betrayal. All nations have their Harlots on the Wall, but these
are discovered in the first assault and the necessary action is taken. It is in 
the
citadel that the true danger lies. Corruption and blackmail being the work of
menials is cheaper than bribery. Moreover, fear of exposure entraps and
makes slaves of men whom money could never buy. There is all the more
reason, as I see it, to suppose that the Germans, with their usual efficiency,
are making use of the most productive and cheapest methods.

Often in this column I have hinted at the possession of knowledge which
tends to substantiate this view. Within the past few days the most extraordinary
facts have been placed before me which co-ordinate with my past
information.


Spreading Debauchery

There exists in the cabinet noir of a certain German Prince a book compiled
by the Secret Service from the reports of German agents who have infested
this country for the past twenty years, agents so vile and spreading debauchery
of such a lasciviousness as only German minds could conceive and only
German bodies execute.


Sodom and Lesbia

The officer who discovered this book while on special service briefly
outlined for me its stupefying contents. In the beginning of the book is a
precis of general instructions regarding the propagation of evils which all
decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia. The blasphemous
compilers even speak of the Groves and High Places mentioned in the Bible.
The most insidious arguments are outlined for the use of the German agent
in his revolting work. Then more than a thousand pages are filled with the
names mentioned by German agents in their reports. There are the names of
47,000 English men and women.

It is a most catholic miscellany. The names of privy councillors, youths of
the chorus, wives of Cabinet Ministers, dancing girls, even Cabinet Ministers
themselves, while diplomats, poets, bankers, editors, newspaper proprietors
and members of His Majesty's household follow each other with no order of
precedence.

As an example of the thoroughness with which the German agent works,
lists of public houses and bars were given which had been successfully
demoralized. These could then be depended upon to spread vice with the
help of only one fixed agent. To secure those whose social standing would


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


suffer from frequenting public places, comfortable flats were taken and
furnished in an erotic manner. Paphian photographs were distributed, while
equivocal pamphlets were printed as the anonymous work of well-known
writers.


The Navy in Danger

No one in the social scale was exempted from contamination by this perfect
system. Agents were specially enlisted in the navy, particularly in the engine
rooms. These had their special instructions. Incestuous bars were established
in Portsmouth and Chatham. In these meeting places the stamina of British
sailors was undermined. More dangerous still, German agents, under the
guise of indecent liaison, could obtain information as to the disposition of the
fleet.

Even the loiterer in the streets was not immune. Meretricious agents of the
Kaiser were stationed at such points as Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner.
In this black book of sin details were given of the unnatural defloration of
children who were drawn to the parks by the summer evening concerts.


The World of High Politics

Impure as were all these things, the great danger was seen in the reports of
those agents who had obtained entree to the world of high politics. Wives of
men in supreme position were entangled. In Lesbian ecstasy the most sacred
secrets of State were betrayed. The sexual peculiarities of members of the
peerage were used as a leverage to open fruitful fields for espionage.

In the glossary of this book is a list of expressions supposed to be used
among themselves by the soul-sick victims of this nauseating disease so
skilfully spread by Potsdam.


Lives are in Jeopardy

In his official reports the German agent is not an idle boaster. The thought
that 47,000 English men and women are held in enemy bondage through
fear calls all clean spirits to mortal combat. There are three million men in
France whose lives are in jeopardy, and whose bravery is of no avail because
of the lack of moral courage in 47,000 of their countrymen, and numbering
among their ranks, as they do, men and women in whose hands the destiny
of this Empire rests.

As I see it, a carefully cultivated introduction of practices which hint at the
extermination of the race is to be the means by which the German is to
prevent us avenging those mounds of lime and mud which once were
Britons.


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IHb EYE IN THE DOOR


The Fall of Rome

When in time I grasped the perfection of this demoniacal plan, it seemed to
me that all the horrors of shells and gas and pestilence introduced by the
Germans in their open warfare would have but a fraction of the effect in
exterminating the manhood of Britain as the plan by which they have
already destroyed the first 47,000.

As I have already said in these columns, it is a terrible thought to
contemplate that the British Empire should fall as fell the great Empire of
Rome, and the victor now, as then, should be the Hun.

The story of the contents of this book has opened my eyes, and the matter
must not rest.


Rivers threw the page down. 'If only German minds can conceive of this
lasciviousness and only German bodies execute it, how on earth do the
47,000 manage to do it?' He took off his glasses and swept his hand down
across his eyes. 'Sorry, I'm being donnish.' He looked at Manning,
noting the lines of strain around his eyes, the coarse tremor as he raised
the cigarette to his mouth. For somebody like Manning, profoundly
committed to living a double life, the revelation that both sides of his
life were visible to unknown eyes must be like having the door to the
innermost part of one's identity smashed open. 'Has anybody else been
sent this?'

'Ross. One or two others.'

'Friends of Ross?'

'Yes.'

'Ross is a ... quite a dangerous man to know.'

'What can I do, Rivers? It's not a recent friendship.'

Rivers sighed. 'I don't think you can do anything.'

Manning sat brooding. 'I think it would help if I felt I could understand
it. I mean, I can see the war's going pretty badly and there are
always going to be people who want scapegoats instead of reasons, but
. . . Why this? I can see why people with German names get beaten up
... or or interned. And conchies. I don't approve, but I can understand
it. I don't understand this.'

'I'm not sure I do. I think it's the result of certain impulses rising to
the surface in wartime, and having to be very formally disowned.
Homosexuality, for instance. In war there's this enormous glorification
of love between men, and yet at the same time it arouses'anxiety. Is it
the right kind of love? Well, one way to make sure it's the right kind is

336


I



THfc tVt IN THE 1JOOR


to make public disapproval of the other thing crystal clear. And then
there's pleasure in killing --'

Manning looked shocked. 'I don't know that '

'No, I meant civilians. Vicarious, but real nevertheless. And in the
process sadistic impulses are aroused that would normally be repressed,
and that also causes anxiety. So to put on a play by a known homosexual
in which a woman kisses a man's severed head . . .'

'I talked about the trial to Jane. I said I thought the real target was
Ross, and one or two others, and she said of course I did. Seeing -- what was 
it? "Seeing his own sex as peripheral to the point at issue was
a feat of mental agility of which no man is capable."'

'I look forward to meeting Mrs Manning one day.'

'She says the the . . . sentimentality about the role women are playing
-- doing their bit and all that -- really masks a kind of deep-rooted fear
that they're getting out of line. She thinks pillorying Maud Allan is
actually a way of teaching them a lesson. Not just lesbians. All women.
Just as Salome is presented as a strong woman by Wilde, and yet at the
same time she has to be killed. I mean it is quite striking at the end
when all the men fall on her and kill her.'

'What do you think about that?'

'I think it's a bit naive. I think it ignores Wilde's identification with
Salome. He isn't saying women like this have to be destroyed. He's
saying people like me have to be destroyed. And how right he was. 7s.'

This was all very well, Rivers thought, but Manning was ill, and it
was not literary discussion that was going to cure him.

'Do you think Spencer's mad?' Manning asked abruptly.

'On the basis of his evidence, yes. Though whether he'll be recognized
as mad . . .'

'It's an odd contrast with Sassoon, isn't it?'

Rivers looked surprised.

'Spencer being feted like this. Sassoon says something perfectly
sensible about the war, and he's packed off to a mental hospital.'

Of course, Rivers thought, all the members of Robert Ross's circle
would know the story of Sassoon's protest against the war, and the
part he'd played in persuading Sassoon to go back.

Manning said, 'I suppose I shouldn't mention him?'

'Why not?'

'Because he's a patient.'

'He's somebody we both know.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Only he's been on my mind lately. I was wondering if they'd have
the nerve to send this to him. Or to anybody out there.'

'I think the sort of mind that produces this can't conceive of the
possibility that any of "the 47,000" might be in France.'

So far Manning had found it impossible to talk about the war.
Manning himself would have denied this. He would have said they
talked about it all the time: strategy, tactics, war aims, the curiously        
|

inadequate response of civilian writers, the poems of Sassoon and
Graves. Suddenly, Rivers thought he saw a way of beginning, very
gently, to force the issue. 'Are you familiar with the strict Freudian
view of war neurosis?' he asked. Manning, he knew, had read a certain
amount of Freud.

'I didn't know there was one.'

'Oh, yes. Basically, they believe the experience of an all-male environment,
with a high level of emotional intensity, together with the
experience of battle, arouses homosexual and sadistic impulses that are
normally repressed. In vulnerable men -- obviously those in whom the
repressed desires are particularly strong -- this leads to breakdown.'

'Is that what you believe?'

Rivers shook his head. 'I want to know what you think.'

'I don't know what makes other people break down. I don't think
sex had much to do with my breakdown.' A slight smile. 'But then I'm
not a repressed homosexual.'

Rivers smiled back. 'But you must have a ... an instinctive reaction,
that it's possible, or it's obvious nonsense, or '

'I'm just trying to think. Do you know Sassoon's poem "The
Kiss"?'

The one about the bayonet. Yes.'

'I think that's the strongest poem he's ever written. You know, I've
never served with him so I don't know this from personal experience,
but I've talked a lot to Robert Graves and he says the extent to which
Sassoon contrives to be two totally different people at the Front is
absolutely amazing. You know he's a tremendously successful and bloodthirsty 
platoon commander, and yet at the same time, back in
billets, out comes the notebook. Another anti-war poem. And the
poem uses the experience of the platoon commander, but it never uses
any of his attitudes. And yet for once, in that one poem, he gets both
versions of himself in.'

Yes, Rivers thought. 'Yes,' he said. 'I see that.'

'And of course it's crawling with sexual ambiguities. But then I


338


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


think it's too easy to see that as a matter of personal ... I don't know
what. The fact is the army's attitude to the bayonet is pretty bloody
ambiguous. You read the training manuals and they're all going on
about importance of close combat. Fair enough, but you get the impression
there's a value in it which is independent of whether it gains the
objective or not. It's proper war. Manly war. Not all this nonsense
about machine-guns and shrapnel. And it's reflected in the training. I
mean, it's one long stream of sexual innuendo. Stick him in the gooleys.
No more little fritzes. If Sassoon had used language like that, he'd never
have been published.' Manning stopped abruptly. 'You know I think
I've lost the thread. No, that's it, I was trying ... I was trying to be
honest and think whether I hated bayonet practice more because . . .
because the body that the sack represents is one that I ... come on,
Rivers. Nice psychological term?'

'Love.'

'I don't know what the answer is. I don't think so. We all hate it. I've
no way of knowing whether I hate it more, because we don't talk
about it. It's just a bloody awful job, and we get on and do it. I mean,
you split enormous parts of yourself off, anyway.'

'Is that what you did?'

'I suppose so.' For a moment it seemed he was about to go on, then
he shook his head.

When he was sure there'd be no more, Rivers said, 'You know we
are going to have to talk about the war, Charles.'

'I do talk about it.'

Silence.

'I just don't see what good it would do to churn everything up. I
know what the theory is.' He looked down at his hands. 'My son
Robert, when he was little ... he used to enjoy being bathed. And
then quite suddenly he turned against it. He used to go stiff and scream
blue murder every time his nurse tried to put him in. And it turned out
he'd been watching the water go down the plug-hole and he obviously
thought he might go down with it. Everybody told him not to be
stupid.' Manning smiled. 'I must say it struck me as an eminently reasonable 
fear.'

Rivers smiled. 'I won't let you go down the plug-hole.'


At dinner the talk was all of the Pemberton Billing trial. Everybody
was depressed by the medical evidence, since this was the first time
psychologists had been invited to pronounce in court on such a subject.


339



1

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'What do we get?' somebody asked. 'Serrel Cookc rambling 011 about
monsters and hereditary degeneracy. The man's a joke.'

If he is, I've lost my sense of humour, Rivers thought.

After dinner he was glad to escape from the hospital and go for a
stroll round the square. London had become a depressing place. Every
placard, every newsboy's cry, every headline focused on the trial. Lord
Alfred Douglas was in the witness-box now, apparently blaming
England's poor showing in the war on the plays of Oscar Wilde. Any
serious consideration of the terrible state of affairs in France was pushed
into second place by the orgy of irrational prejudice that was taking
place at the Old Bailey. Manning was quite right of course, people
didn't want reasons, they wanted scapegoats. You saw it in the hospital
too, where hostility to the pacifist orderlies mounted as the news from
France grew worse, but there was some element of logic in that. Men
were being whipped back into line. Into the Line. Unless he were suffering
from the complaint Jane Manning had diagnosed, of being incapable
of seeing his own sex as peripheral to anything. But no, he thought
Manning was right. Maud Allan was in the firing line almost by accident.
The real targets were men who couldn't or wouldn't conform.

Rivers's thoughts turned to Sassoon. Manning's experience clearly
showed that every member of Robert Ross's circle was at risk, liable
to the same treatment as Ross himself. It didn't help that Ross was
opposed to the war, though he had not approved of Sassoon's protest,
arguing -- quite rightly in Rivers's opinion -- that it would destroy
Sassoon without having any impact on the course of events. Ross's
own method of opposition, according to Manning, was to show photographs
of mutilated corpses to any civilian who might benefit from the
shock. Rivers was glad Sassoon was well away from Ross, and the trial.

Once, at Craiglockhart, he'd tried to warn Sassoon of the danger.
As long ago as last November he'd told him about the cabinet noir, the
Black Book, the 47,000 names of eminent men and women whose
double lives left them open to German blackmail.

--      Relax, Rivers. I'm not eminent.

--      No, but you're a friend of Robert Ross, and you've publicly advocated a
negotiated peace. That's enough! You're vulnerable, Siegfried. There's no
point pretending you're not.

--      And what am I supposed to do about it? Toe the line, tailor my opinions
. . . But what you're really saying is, if I can't conform in one area of life, 
then I
have to conform in the others. Not just the surface things, everything. Even
against my conscience. Well, I can't live like that. Nobody should live like 
that.


340

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


It had been pleasant talking to Manning about Siegfried. Apart from
Robert Graves, whom Rivers saw occasionally, Manning was the only
acquaintance they had in common.

The square was deserted. On nights of the full moon people hurried
back to the safety of their cellars. Rivers's footsteps seemed to follow
him, echoing along the empty pavement. The moon had drifted clear
from the last gauzy wrack of cloud, and his shadow stretched ahead of
him, the edges almost as sharp as they would have been by day.

So calm, so clear a night. We're in for it, he thought. That was one
thing he'd never had to cope with at Craiglockhart: bombs falling
within earshot of patients who jumped out of their skins if a teaspoon
rattled in a saucer. He turned and began to walk rapidly towards the
dark and shuttered building.


THIRTEEN


Head is the one awake inside the sleeping hospital. Masked and gowned,
a single light burning above his head, he stands beside a dissecting table
on which a man lies, face upwards, naked, reeking of formaldehyde.
The genitals are shrivelled, the skin the dingy gold of old paper. Head
finishes drawing an outline on the shaven head, says, 'Right then,' and
extends his gloved hand for the drill. But something's wrong. Even as
the drill whirs, the golden-skinned man stirs. Rivers tries to say, 'Don't,
he's alive,' but Head can't, or won't, hear him. A squeak of bone, a
mouth stretched wide, and then a hand grasps Head's hand at the wrist,
and the cadaver in all its naked, half-flayed horror rises from the table
and pushes him back.

The corridor outside Rivers's room is empty, elongated, the floor
polished and gleaming. Then the doors at the end flap open with a
noise like the beating of wings and the cadaver bounds through, pads
from door to door, sniffs, tries to locate him more by smell than sight.
At last it finds the right door, advances on the bed, bends over him,
thrusts its anatomical drawing of a face into his, as he struggles to wake
up and remember where he is.

Christ. He lay back, aware of sweat on his chest and in his groin. He
was in a hospital bed, too high, too narrow, the mattress covered with


34i


THE F. YF IN THF DOOR


rubber that creaked as he moved. He could see that ruin of a face
bending over him. In these moments between sleep and waking, he
was able to do -- briefly -- what other people take for granted: see
things that were not there.

Quickly, before the moment passed, he began to dissect the images
of which the dream was composed. The dissecting-room in the dream
had not been the room at the Anatomical Institute where he'd watched
Head at work that morning, but the anatomy theatre at Bart's, where
he had trained.

The whole emotional impression left by the dream was one of...
He lay, eyes closed in the darkness, sifting impressions. Contamination.
To imagine Head, the gentlest of men, drilling the skull of a conscious
human being was a sort of betrayal. The link with Head's carrying out
the tests on Lucas was obvious. Rivers had thought, as he watched
Head looking at Lucas, that the same suspension of empathy that was
so necessary a part of the physician's task was also, in other contexts,
the root of all monstrosity. Not merely the soldier, but the torturer
also, practises the same suspension.

The dream was about dissociation. Like most of his dreams these
days, a dream about work. He never seemed to dream about sex any
more, though before the war sexual conflicts had been a frequent
subject of dreams. A cynic might have said he was too exhausted. He
thought it was probably more complicated, and more interesting, than
that, but he had little time for introspection. Certainly no time for it
now. He sat up and flapped his pyjama jacket to make the sweat
evaporate, then lay back and tried to compose himself for sleep. He
never slept well on the nights he stayed at the hospital, partly because
of the uncomfortable bed, partly because the expectation of being
woken kept his sleep light.

He was just beginning to drift off when the whistles blew.

By the time the orderly knocked on his door, he was out of bed and
fastening his dressing-gown. He followed the man along the corridor
to the main ward where Sister Walters greeted him. She was a thin,
long-nosed Geordie with a sallow skin and a vein of class-hatred that
reminded him of Prior. Oddly enough, it seemed to be directed entirely
at her own sex. She hated the VADs, most of whom were girls of
good family 'doing their bit' with - it had to be admitted - varying
degrees of seriousness.. She loved her officer patients - my boys, she
called them -- but the VADs, girls from a similar social background
after all, she hated. One night last December, as the guns thudded and


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


the ground shook beneath the direct hit on Vauxhall Bridge, they'd sat
drinking cocoa together, and the barriers of rank had come down,
enough at least for her to say bitterly, 'They make me sick, the way
they go on. "Oooh! Look at me! I'm dusting!" "I'm sweeping a
floor." Do you know, when I was training we got eight quid a year. That was for 
a seventy-hour week, and you got your breakages stopped
off that.'

Cocoa was being made now and carried round on trays. Rivers
went from bed to bed of the main ward. Most of the men were
reasonably calm, though jerks and twitches were worse than normal.
In the single rooms, where the more seriously disturbed patients were,
the signs of distress were pitiful. These were men who had joked their
way through bombardments that rattled the tea-cups in Kent, now
totally unmanned. Weston had wet himself. He stood in the middle of
his room, sobbing, while a nurse knelt in front of him and coaxed him
to step out of the circle of sodden cloth. Rivers took over from her,
got Weston into clean pyjamas and back into bed. He stayed with him
till he was calm, then handed over to an orderly and went in search of
Sister Walters.

She handed him his cocoa. 'Captain Manning's smoking. Do you
think you could --'

'Yes, of course.'

At Craiglockhart the corridors had reeked of cigarettes, and there
the staff had contrived not to notice. Here, with two wards full of
paralysed patients, the no-smoking rule had to be enforced. Rivers
tapped once and walked in.

Manning was sitting up in bed. 'Hello,' he said, sounding surprised.

'I'm afraid I've got to ask you to put that out. Two lifts. Twenty
wheelchairs.'

'Yes, certainly.' Manning stubbed his cigarette out. 'Stupid of me. I
didn't know you did nights.'
'Only at full moons.'

'I thought that theory of mental illness had been exploded.'

Rivers smiled. 'You know what I mean.'

'Sister Walters says they got Vauxhall Bridge twice. Is that right?'

'Yes. Though we don't need to worry when they hit it. Only when
they miss.'

'Reminds me of last Christmas. Do you remember that raid? I was
staying with Ross, Sassoon was there as well, and it was very funny
because it was the first raid I'd experienced, and I was all set to be the


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THB BYE IN THE DOOR


cool, collected veteran, calming down the poor nervous civilians. I was
a complete bloody wreck. Ross's housekeeper was better than me.
Sassoon was the same. In fact I remember him saying, "All that fuss
about whether I should go back or not. I won't be any bloody good
when I do."'

A ragged sound of singing. 'Listen,' Manning said. He began to sing
with them, almost under his breath.


Bombed last night

And bombed the night before

Gunna get bombed tonight

If we never get bombed any more.

When we're bombed we're scared as we can be ...


'First time I've heard that outside France.' A pause. 'You know, I've
been thinking about what you said . . . about remembering and trying
to talk about it.'

Rivers propped his chin on his hands and said, 'Go on.' Even as he
spoke, he recalled Prior's wickedly accurate imitation of this position. Damn 
Prior.

'You know these attacks I have? Well, they tend to start with a sort
of waking dream. It's nothing very much actually, it's not horrifying,
it's just a line of men marching along duckboards wearing gas masks
and capes. Everything's a sort of greenish-yellow, the colour it is when
you look through the visor. The usual. . . porridge.' He swallowed. 'If
a man slips off the duckboard it's not always possible to get him out
and sometimes he just sinks. The packs are so heavy, you see, and the
mud's fifteen feet deep. It's not like ordinary mud. It's like a bog, it...
sucks. They're supposed to hold on to the pack of the man in front.'

'And you say this. . . dream triggers the attack?'

'I don't know. I suppose so.'

'What in particular?'

Manning tried to answer and then shook his head.

'If you had to pick out the worst thing, what would it be?'

There's a hand coming out of the mud. It's holding the duckboard
and . . . nothing else. Everything else is underneath.'

A short silence.

'Oh, and there's a voice.' Manning reached for his cigarettes and
then remembered he couldn't smoke. 'It's not coming from anybody.
It's just . . . there.'


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THE EYE IN The UOOR


Rivers waited. 'What does it say?'

'"Where's Scudder?"' Manning smiled. 'It's a rather nasty, knowing little 
voice. "Where's Scudder? Where's Scudder?" '

'Do you answer?'

Manning shook his head. 'No point. It knows the answer.'

Silence, except for the sound of singing, fading now, and then, in
the distance, the thudding of the guns.

Rivers said, 'You know, if we went down to my room you could
smoke.'

Manning looked surprised. 'Now?'
'Why not? Unless you think you can get back to sleep?'

Manning didn't answer that. There was no need.


'There,' Rivers said, putting an ashtray at Manning's elbow. The lamp
created a circle of light around the desk, a world.

'You don't, do you?' Manning said, lighting up.

'A cigar now and then.'

Manning inhaled deeply, his eyes closed. 'One of the reasons I don't talk about 
it,' he said, smiling, 'apart from cowardice, is that it seems so
futile.'

'Because it's impossible to make people understand?'

'Yes. Even a comparatively small thing. The feeling you get when
you go into the Salient, especially if you've been there before and you
know what you're facing. You really do say goodbye to everything.
You just put one foot in front of another, one step, then the next, then
the next.'

Rivers waited.

'It's . . . ungraspable,' Manning said at last. 'I don't mean you can't
grasp it because you haven't been there. I mean, / can't grasp it and I have 
been there. I can't get my mind round it.'

'You were going to tell me about Scudder.'

'Was I?'

Their eyes met.

Manning smiled. 'Yes, I suppose I was. He was a man in my company.
You know, the whole thing's based on the idea that if you've
got the right number of arms and legs and you're not actually mentally
defective you can be turned into a soldier. Well, Scudder was the
walking proof that it isn't true. He was hopeless. He knew he was. The
night before we were due to move up, he got drunk. Well, a lot of
them got drunk, but he was . . . legless. He didn't turn up for parade,


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and so he was court-martialled. I went to see him the night before. He
was being held in a barn, and we sat on a bale of straw and talked. It
turned out he'd been treated for shell shock the previous year. With
electric shocks. I didn't know they did that.'

'Oh, yes,' Rivers said. 'They do.'

'He was at Messines when the mines went up. Apparently he used to
dream about mines and blood. And he used to jerk his head and make
stupid noises. That's what the doctor called them. Stupid noises. Anyway it 
worked, after a fashion. The electric shocks. The night after
he had the treatment he didn't dream about mines. He dreamt he was
back in the trenches having electric shock treatment. I stayed with him
a couple of hours, I suppose.' Manning smiled faintly. 'He was a most
unfortunate-looking youth. I mention that in case there's a doctrinaire
Freudian lurking under your desk.'

Rivers pretended to look. 'No-o. There isn't one behind it either.'

Manning laughed. 'The thing was he was extremely bright. And I
don't know whether it was snobbery or ... or what it was, but I'd
been assuming he wasn't. Actually I don't think it was snobbery, it was
just he was so bloody bad at everything. You couldn't believe there
was an intelligent mind behind all those . . . cock-ups. But there was.'
His expression became momentarily remote. 'After that, I noticed him
more. I thought --'

'What did he get?'

'At the court martial? Two hours' field punishment a day. When
everybody else was resting -- uh! -- he'd be cleaning limbers, that sort of
thing. I used to stop and have a word with him. I don't think it helped
because it took him away from the other men, and in the end it's the
other men who keep you going.'

'Go on. You say you thought --'

'I thought he was clumsy. And then after this talk I watched him, I
watched him at bayonet practice, running in and lunging and . . . missing. You 
know, the thing's this big, and he was missing it. And
suddenly I realized it was nothing to do with clumsiness. He couldn't
switch off. He couldn't . . . turn off the part of himself that minded.
I'm quite certain when he finally got the bayonet in, he saw it bleed.
And that's the opposite of what should be happening. You know I saw
men once ... in close combat, as the manuals say, and one man was
reciting the instructions. Lunge, one, two: twist, one, two, out, one, two
. . . Literally, killing by numbers. And that's the way it has to be.
If a man's properly trained he'll function on the day almost like an


34<5


r


f

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


automaton. And Scudder was the opposite of that. Somehow the whole
thing had gone into reverse. I think probably because of the
breakdown, because I can see the same sort of thing happening to me.
Like red -- the colour red -- whatever it is, even if it's a flower or a book 
-- it's always blood.'

Rivers had gone very still. He waited.

'When I was out there, I could be in blood up to the elbows, it
didn't bother me. It's almost as if instead of normal feelings being
cut off, there aren't any divisions left at all. Everything washes into
everything else. I don't know if that makes sense.'

'Very much so.'

A pause. 'Anyway, we moved forward. It was raining. I don't know
why I bother to say that. It was always raining. The heavens had
opened. And we were told to report to the graveyard.' Manning laughed,
a genuine full-blooded laugh. 'I thought, my God somebody's developed
a sense of humour. But it was absolutely true. We were billeted in
the graveyard. And it was extraordinary. All the tombs had been
damaged by shells and you could see through into the vaults, and this
was in an area where there were corpses everywhere. The whole business
of collecting and burying the dead had broken down. Wherever
you looked there were bodies or parts of bodies, and yet some of the
younger ones -- Scudder was one -- were fascinated by these vaults.
You'd come across them lying on their stomachs trying to see through
the holes, because the vaults were flooded, and the coffins were floating
around. It was almost as if these people were really dead, and the
corpses by the road weren't. Any more than we were really alive.

'We were shelled that night. Three men wounded. I was organizing
stretcher-bearers - not easy, as you can imagine - and I'd just finished
when Hines walked up and said, "Scudder's gone." He'd just got up
and walked away. The other men thought he'd gone to the latrine, but
then he didn't come back. We got together a search-party. I thought
he might have fallen into one of the vaults, and we crawled round
calling his name, and all the time I knew he hadn't. I decided to go
after him. I know, not what a company commander ought to have
done, but I had a very good second in command and I knew he
couldn't have got far. You see, everything was coming forward for the
attack, and the road was absolutely choked. I hoped I could get to him
before the military police picked him up. He'd have been shot. We
were far enough forward for it to count as desertion in the face of the
enemy. I was struggling and floundering along, and it really was


347


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


almost impossible, and then I saw him. He hadn't got very far. When I
caught up with him, he didn't even look at me. Just went on walking.
And I walked beside him and tried to talk to him, and he obviously
wasn't listening. So I just pushed him off the road, and we slithered
down and stopped on the rim of a crater. There's always gas lingering
on the water. When you get close your eyes sting. He was blue. And I
tried to talk to him. He said, "This is mad." And I said, "Yes, I know,
but we've all got to do it." In the end I simply named people. Men in
his platoon. And 1 said, "They've got to do it. You'll only make it
harder for them." In the end he just got up and followed me, like a
little lamb.'

Manning stirred and reached for another cigarette. 'We went forward
almost as soon as we got back. The orders were full of words like
"trenches" and "attacking positions". There weren't any trenches. The
attacking position was a line of sticks tied with bits of white ribbon.
We were late arriving, and it was getting light. If we hadn't been late,
we'd've crawled straight past them in the dark. The "line" was a row
of shell-craters, filled with this terrible sucking mud. And you just
crouched beneath the rim, and . . . waited. We advanced. No close
work, but machine-guns directly ahead up the slope. A lot of casualties. A lot, 
and no hope of getting them back. It was taking the stretcher
bearers a couple of hours to go a hundred yards. So there we were,
crouched in another row of shell-holes exactly like the first. And all
hell was let loose. As soon as it died down a bit, I tried to crawl from
one hole to another. It took me an hour to crawl between two holes.
And in the other hole I found four men, none of them wounded, and I
thought, thank God, and then suddenly one of them said, "Where's
Scudder?" Well, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't
move, the shelling was so heavy. And then there was a lull, and we
heard a cry. It seemed to be coming from a crater slightly further back,
not far, and we crawled along and found him.

'He'd either slipped or been blown down the slope. Blown, I suspect,
because he'd got quite a way in. He was already up to his chest. We
tried to get him out, but even forming a line and holding out a rifle we
couldn't reach him. He could just get the tips of his fingers on the butt,
but his hands were slippery with mud and they kept sliding off. I could
see if we went on trying somebody else was going to slip in. And
Scudder was panicking and . . . pleading with us to do Something. I
have never seen anything like his face. And it went on and on. He was
slipping away all the time, but slowly. I knew what I had to do. I got


348


The H F. EYE IN THE DOOR


the men lined up and told him we were going to try again, and while
he was looking at the others I crawled round the other side, and fired.'
Manning closed his eyes. 'I missed. And that was terrible, because then
he knew what was happening. I fired again, and this time I didn't miss.

'We spent the rest of the night there, in that hole. It was very odd.
You know, I don't think any of the men would have said, "You did
the wrong thing. You should have let him die slowly." And yet
nobody wanted to talk to me. They kept their distance.'

A long silence. 'His mother wrote to me in hospital. To thank me.
Apparently Scudder had written to her and told her I'd been kind to
him.'

Rivers said firmly, 'You were.'

Manning looked at him and then quickly away. 'We were relieved
the following night. I reported back to Battalion HQ and they expressed
extreme displeasure. Apparently we'd been a bulge in the line.
We'd been sitting in the wrong shell-holes. They were having dinner,
veal and ham pie and red wine, and suddenly I realized they weren't
even going to offer us a fucking drink. I had Hines with me, he was
dead on his feet. So I leant across the table, took two glasses, gave one
to Hines and said, "Gentlemen, the King." And of course they all had
to struggle to their feet.' He laughed. 'And then we got the hell out of
it before they could work out how to put an officer on a charge for
proposing the loyal toast. We staggered down that road giggling like a
pair of schoolboys. We were still laughing when the shell got us. I got
this. Poor old Hines ... I crawled across to him. And he looked
straight at me and said, "I'm all right, Mum." And died.'

Rivers stirred. He was about to speak when he heard bugles in the
streets. 'Let's have the curtains open, shall we?' he said.

He pulled the heavy curtains back, and grey dawn light flooded into
the room. Manning flinched. He got up and joined Rivers by the
window, and was just in time to see a taxi drive along the other side of
the square. Rivers opened the windows, and the sound of birdsong
filled the room.

'You know,' Manning said, 'when Ross told me they sounded the
all-clear by driving boy scouts with bugles round the streets in taxis, I
didn't believe him.'

They watched the taxi leave the square. Manning said, 'I used to
find a certain kind of Englishness engaging. I don't any more.'


349


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


FOURTEEN


Sarah was coming. The thought buoyed Prior up as he walked along
the Bayswater Road to the underground station. Only when he was
on the train, staring sightlessly at his reflection in the black glass, did
his thoughts turn to Spragge. He hadn't seen him face to face since that
evening in the park, but he'd suspected more than once that Spragge
was following him. Possibly it was just nerves. His nerves were bad,
and the intolerable sticky heat didn't help. The gaps in his memory
were increasing both in length and frequency, and they terrified him.

Like the undiscovered territory on medieval maps, Rivers said. Where unknown, 
there place monsters. But a better analogy, because
closer to his own experience, was No Man's Land. He remembered
looking down a lane in France. The lane had a bend in it, and what was
beyond the bend was hidden by a tall hedge. Beyond that was No
Man's Land. Beyond that again, the German lines. Full of men like
himself. Men who ate, slept, shat, blew on their fingers to ease the pain
of cold, moved the candle closer, strained their eyes to read again
letters they already had by heart. He knew that, they all knew it. Only
it was impossible to believe, because the lane led to a country where
you couldn't go, and this prohibition alone meant that everything
beyond that point was threatening. Uncanny.

Something about the lifeless air of the underground encouraged
morbid thoughts. Above ground, in the relatively cool, coke-smelling
air of King's Cross, he felt more cheerful. Please God, he thought, no
gaps while Sarah's here.

He waited by the barrier, sick with excitement. The train slid to a
halt, grunted, wheezed, belched, subsided into a series of disgruntled
mutters, and then all along its length doors swung open, and people
started to get out. The sheer excitement of knowing he was going to
see her stopped him seeing her, and for one terrifying moment all the
women on the platform were Sarah. Then his mind cleared, and there
was only one woman, walking straight towards him.

He caught her in his arms and swung her off her feet. When, finally,
he set her down they stared at each other. He noticed the yellow skin,
the dark shadows round her eyes, the fringe of ginger hair which was
not her own colour, but some effect of the chemicals she worked with.

'Well?' she said.


350


THE r Y F IN THE DOOR


'You look beautiful. But then you always do.'

He took her bag and steered her towards the taxi rank.

'Can't we go on the underground?' she said, pulling back.

He looked surprised.

'I've never been on it.'

Her face lit up as she stepped out on to the descending staircase. She
was too excited to talk until they were on the train, and had stopped at
several stations, and the first novelty of hurtling in a lighted capsule
through dark tunnels had worn off. Then she turned to him and said,
'You look a bit tired. Are you all right?'

'It's the heat,' he said. 'I haven't been sleeping well.'

'You will tonight.'

He smiled. 'I was hoping not to sleep at all tonight.'

But that was too direct. She smiled but looked away.

'How's your mother?'

'The same. The shop's not doing too well. No demand for secondhand
stuff these days.'

'What about Dr Lawson's Cure for Female Blockages and Obstructions?
I bet she's doing a roaring trade in that.'

'Geraway, man. It's all sixpenny ticklers these days.'

'Is it?' Prior asked innocently.

She smiled and eventually laughed.

'How was your trip home?' she asked after a while.

'Not bad. I met a few old friends.'

'Did you tell your mam about me?'

He hesitated.

'You didn't,' she said.

'I prepared the ground.'

'Billy. You think she won't like me, don't you?'

He knew she wouldn't. He had a very clear idea of the sort of girl
his mother wanted him to marry. One of those green-skinned, titless
girls who wore white lawn blouses and remembered their handkerchiefs.
The Ministry was full of them. The extraordinary thing was he did find them 
attractive, though not in a way he liked. They woke his
demons up, just as surely as making love to Sarah put them to sleep.
'It's not that,' he said.

'Isn't it?' She smiled, and he realized she simply didn't care. 'What
about your dad?'

'I don't tell him anything.'

'Do you think he'd like me?'


35i


THE EYE IN The UOOk


He'd never thought about it. As soon as he considered it, he knew
his father would like her, and she'd like him. She wouldn't approve of
the old sod, but she'd get on all right with him. Instantly the idea of
taking her home became even less attractive. 'There's plenty of time,'
he said.


Leading her down the steps to the basement he was ashamed of the
overflowing bins and the smell, but he needn't have worried. Sarah
was delighted with the flat. He realized, as he took her from room to
room, that it could have been twice as dark, twice as stuffy, and she
would still have been pleased with it. For two days and nights this
would be their home, and that was all that mattered.

She ended the tour sitting on the single bed in his room, unselfconsciously
bouncing up and down to test the mattress. Then she looked
up and found him watching her, and her face was suffused with a blush
that banished the yellow from her skin. His breath caught in his throat,
and he swallowed hard. 'If you'd like to get washed or or bathed, it's
next door.'

'Yes, I -'

Till get a towel.'

Prior wished sometimes he didn't know what it was like to be groped,
to be pounced on before you're ready. As he pulled a towel out of the
airing cupboard, he heard the bathroom door open and then felt her
arms come round him and clasp his chest. She pressed her face between
his shoulders, her mouth against his spine. 'Can you feel this?' she
asked. And she began to groan, deep noises, making his spine and the
hollows of his chest vibrate with her breath. He pushed her gently
away. 'You must be tired,' he said.

She giggled, and he felt her laughter in his bones. 'Not too tired.'


They did have a bath, eventually. Afterwards, lying on the bed, she
traced his ribs with the tips of her fingers, propped up on one elbow,
her hair screening them both. 'You know the part of men I like best?'
she said, moving her finger down.

Then?' Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called into the
passage, 'Ge-orge? Albert? Are you there?'

She smiled, but persisted. 'This part.' Her finger slid into the hollow
beneath his ribs and down across his belly.

'There?'

'Yes.'


352


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Uh? Uh?' he said, thrusting his hips upward.
'Oh, that.'

'" That'T He struggled to sit up, only to subside as she slid down the
bed and took his flaccid penis into her mouth.
She looked up and smiled. 'He's nice too.'
'He's a bloody disgrace at the moment. Look at him.'
'You can't expect miracles.'
He closed his eyes. 'Go on doing that you might just get one.'


Hanging over her, watching the stretched mouth, the slit eyes, the
head thrown back until it seemed her spine must crack, he remembered
other faces. The dying looked like that.


'What shall we do?' he asked. 'Are you hungry?'

'Not really.'

'We could go to Oxford Street. Look round the shops.'

'Don't sound so enthusiastic.'

'Or Kew.'

'What do you want to do?'

'Kew, I think. The weather can't last and we can do indoor things
tomorrow.'

'More? You'll wear me out.'

'Other things.'

'Oh.'


Once in the gardens they wandered aimlessly, more interested in each
other than in the plants. As the afternoon wore on, the heat thickened
until there was a brassy glare in the sky, as if a furnace door had
opened. Still they walked, each adjusting to the other's stride, hardly
aware when their linked shadow faded from the grass.

Drops of rain striking their faces startled them out of their absorption.
They looked around, dazed. The rain began to beat down, lashing
their heads and shoulders. In less time than seemed possible, Sarah's
hair was hanging in dark, reddish-brown strands and the sleeves of her
blouse had become transparent. Prior looked for shelter, but could see
only some trees. They made for those and stood under them, but there
was little protection. Rain streaked the trunks and splashed through
the leaves on to the backs of their necks.

Sarah was beginning to shiver with cold. Prior didn't know where
they were. He could see a little mock Grecian temple on a grassy


353


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR

f!

mound, but that was open to the wind. From his previous visits he
remembered the Palm House, which was certainly warm. That would
be the best place if he could manage to locate it. He worked out where
the main gate was, and thought he could remember that you turned
left. 'I think we should make a run for it,' he said. 'This isn't going to
go over.'

They ran, heads bent, Prior with his arm round Sarah, splashing
through puddles. Rivulets of mud, washed out of flowerbeds, ran
down the paths. Sarah refused the offer of his tunic and strode through
it all, drenched, skirt caught between her legs, blouse transparent, hair
stringy, skin glowing, with a stride that would have covered mountains.
She had decided to enjoy it, she said.

The lake was a confusion of exploding circles and bubbles, too
turbulent to reflect the inky sky. They ran the last few yards and
entered the Palm House. Prior felt a rippling effect on his face and neck
and then, immediately, an uncomfortable wave of damp heat. He
began to cough. Sarah turned to him. 'Isn't this bad for your chest?'

'No,' he said, straightening up. 'In fact it's ideal.'

The aisles were crowded, so much so it was difficult to move. Thick
green foliage surrounded them, and towered to the dazzling glass roof
above their heads. Smells of wet earth, of leaves dripping moisture, a
constant trickle of water, and somewhere a trapped blackbird singing.
But as they moved deeper into the crush, it was the smell of people
that took over: damp cloth, wet hair, steamy skin.

Prior took Sarah's arm and pointed to the gangway above. 'Come
on, it'll be less crowded.'

He had a dim feeling there might also be more air up there, for in
spite of what he'd said to Sarah he was finding the atmosphere oppressive.
Sarah followed slowly, wanting to look at the plants. She tugged
at his arm and pointed to a flower that had the most incredibly pink
penile-looking stamens. 'Isn't he beautiful?'

'I thought you were a rib-cage girl?'

'Not ribs. The '

He laughed and pulled her to him. They were standing at the bottom
of the spiral staircase. She slid her hand between his legs and rubbed. 'I
could be converted.'

He pressed her more closely against him, his mouth buried in her
wet hair, looking over her head, focusing on nothing. Suddenly his eye
registered a familiar shape. The green blur cleared, and he found himself
gazing, through the branches of some tall plant with holes in its leaves,


354


THE P Y P. IN The H F. D O O R


into the face of Lionel Spraggc. There could be no mistake. They
stared at each other through the foliage, no more than four or five
feet apart. Then Spragge turned and pushed into the crowd, which
swallowed him.

Sarah looked up. 'What's the matter?'

'Let's go upstairs.'

He took her hand and pulled her towards the staircase. At every turn
he looked down through the green leaves of the canopy at the heads
and shoulders below, until eventually they ceased to look like individual
people. As they climbed higher, the sound of rain on the glass roof
grew louder. The windows were misted up, and a steamy, diffuse,
white light spread over everything. He looked down on to the gleaming
canopy of leaves. And then at the aisles, searching for Spragge's
broad shoulders and square head. He thought he saw him several times
as he and Sarah walked round the gangway, but could never be sure.
At first Sarah exclaimed over the different shapes and patterns of the
leaves, which were indeed beautiful, as he acknowledged after a cursory
glance. Then, gradually, sensing his withdrawal, she fell silent.

I should have spoken to him, Prior thought, though he couldn't
imagine what he would have said. But somehow the not speaking
seemed in retrospect to give the encounter a hallucinatory quality. He
looked down again, and now he would have been relieved to see
Spragge's square head moving below.

He felt Sarah watching him and made an effort to behave more
normally, rubbing condensation from the glass, trying to see out. 'You
know, I think we might just as well make a dash for it.'

He had begun to feel exposed, here above the leaves, -with the white
light flooding over everything. Down there in the crowd, Spragge had
only to look up through a gap in the foliage and there he was, floodlit
under the white light of the dome.

'Yes, all right,' Sarah said.

She sounded puzzled, but ready to go along with whatever he
suggested. But she was no fool, his Sarah. He was going to have to tell
her something.

Others had also decided to make a dash for it. A group of women
with heavy drenched skirts were running stiff-legged towards the main
gate.

'Can you run?' he asked.

A glint of amusement. 'Can youT

Good question. By the time they reached the underground station,


355


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


he was more out of breath than her. He remembered, as he pressed his
hand to his side, Spragge saying, 'I was behind you on the platform.'
Suddenly he didn't want the underground. He didn't want to be shut
in. 'Look, I've got a better idea,' he said. 'Why don't we go on the
river? If we get off at Westminster Bridge we could see the Abbey.'

The boat was already moored when they reached the landing stage,
and beginning to be crowded. At the last moment, as the engine began
to throb, a crowd of people swept on board, including what looked
like a girls' school party. Prior stood up and gave one of the teachers
his seat. Till get you a cup of tea,' he whispered to Sarah and went to
the bar.

As he stood waiting his turn, the roar increased, the river churned,
and they began moving out into midstream. He got the tea, took it
back to Sarah, and tried to drink his own, but found it too difficult to
keep his feet on the tilting deck, so he moved away from her and went
to stand in the doorway that connected the covered deck with the
open benches in the stern. Even these were full, and in fact the rain had
almost stopped. A white sun could be glimpsed now and then through
a hazy veil of cloud.

On the front bench a group of elderly cockney men were making
the best of a bad job, laughing and joking at everything. A little way
behind, on the end of the third bench, sat a man with unusually broad
shoulders. He looked like Spragge, but it was difficult to tell because
he was wearing a hat and facing away from Prior. Prior craned to see
the side of his face. It was Spragge. Had to be. And yet he wasn't sure.
There was something odd about the way the man didn't turn, didn't
move. Edging along the railing towards him, Prior became aware of a
slowness in his movements, as if he were wading through glue. He saw
himself, in his mind's eye, go up to the man, tap him on the shoulder,
wait for him to turn, and the face that turned towards him . . . was his
own. He sat down, his eyes level with the railings from which a row of
glittering raindrops hung. He reached out his hand and, with the tip of
his forefinger, destroyed them one by one. The wet, running uncomfortably
under his shirt cuff, brought him back to himself. He looked
again. It might or might not be Spragge, but it certainly looked nothing
like him. The whole powerful, brutal bulk of the head and shoulders
was as different from his own slight build as any two physiques could
be, and yet again, as he got up and began to move forward, he felt he
was looking at the back of his own head. He breathed deeply, gazing
through the rails at the brown, swollen, sinuous river, making himself


356


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


follow individual twigs and leaves as they were borne along, noticing
how the different currents of water, as they met and parted, rippled
like muscles under skin. They were approaching another bridge. He
steadied himself, walked up to the man and tapped him on the
shoulder.

Spragge's face was a relief. So much so that it took several seconds
for the anger to surface. 'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Going back to London. What are you doing?'

He sounded genuinely surprised, but Prior had caught the hiccup of
laughter in his voice. Spragge had spoken more loudly than he needed,
playing to the small audience of cockneys, and to the larger audience
on the benches behind.

Prior lowered his voice. 'Are you following me?' 'Following you?' Again very 
loud. 'Now why should I do that?'
He sounded like a bottom-of-the-bill music-hall actor conveying
injured innocence. The impression was not of somebody who'd decided
to act as one possible response to a situation, but of somebody
who couldn't not act. You had the feeling he would act in front of the
bathroom mirror. That if ever you succeeded in ripping the mask off
there would be no face behind it. Prior felt a wave of revulsion. 'If
you're following me,' he said, Till --'

'Yes, what will you do?' Spragge waited, as if the question genuinely
interested him. 'Call the police? Have me arrested? It's not against the
law to go to Kew.' He smiled. 'Nice girl,' he said, nodding towards the
prow. And then he cupped his hands against his chest.

'If you go anywhere near her, I'll break your fucking neck.'
Spragge laughed, jowls shaking. He put his hand on Prior's chest
and slapped it, genially. 'That's all right,' he said. Then he sat down
again and looked out over the river, with no more than a sideways
glance at the cockneys, and a faint smile.


In something not moving, something too steady for a boat. Hands,
mottled purple and green, moved along polished wood. Then he was
back, staring up at a window made of chips of purple and green light.
He looked for Sarah and couldn't see her. In a panic he leapt up and
began searching the Abbey, thrusting tourists aside, trailing hostile
stares.

He found her at last, standing by the effigy of an eighteenth-century
bishop, running her hand over the smooth marble. A shaft of sunlight
had found the auburn lights in her hair.


357


1 H E EYE IN THE DOOR


She looked up as he arrived, breathless. 'You back now?'

The question was so apposite it silenced him. For a moment he
thought, she knows. And immediately rejected the idea. Of course she
didn't know.

They went home by taxi. Prior thought about Spragge, because he
was afraid of thinking about anything else. What angered him was the
thought that Spragge might have seen that little act of intimacy in the
Palm House when Sarah had moved closer and rubbed his cock through
the hard cloth of his breeches. A good moment. In all that press of wet,
sweating, steamy-skinned people, they'd been alone, and then
Spragge's face peering through the leaves. Had he seen? He must have.
Prior was aware of feeling an almost excessive sense of exposure, of
violation even, as if he'd been seen, arse upwards, in the act itself.

The taxi jolted and swayed. A memory started to surface that seemed
to have nothing to do with the afternoon's events. He was ill with
asthma, walking with his father's hand. Where could they have been
going? His father had never taken him anywhere, he'd been too
ashamed of the little runt that had mysteriously sprung from his loins.
Perhaps his mother had been ill. Yes, that was it.

They'd sat on a bench somewhere, and a woman brought him
lemonade. Real lemonade, his father had said proudly - but why
proudly? -- not that gassy bottled stuff. There had been lime jelly too,
with jelly babies suspended in it. While he was picking at it, his father
and the woman went upstairs. He could hear voices from the open
window above his head. The boy, Harry. Then his father's voice, thick
and hurried. He's all right. Wraps himself round that lot he won't have
much to grumble about.

'Wrapping himself round that lot' had not been easy. He loved
jelly, but hated jelly babies, mainly because of the way people ate
them, nibbling at their feet, then at their faces, then boldly biting off
the head and turning the headless body round to display the shiny open
wound. He contemplated eating his way round them, freeing them
from their quivering prison, but he knew he couldn't do that. The
jelly had been specially made -- it wasn't grown-up food -- and his
father would be angry. So, one by one, he had forced them down,
swallowing them whole, his eyes fixed on the trees so he wouldn't
have to think about what he was doing. Even so, he'd gagged once or
twice, his eyes had watered, while upstairs the thick whispers came and
went and the bed springs creaked.

On the way home his father had said, casually, 'Better not tell your


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


mam.' And then he'd sat him astride his shoulders and carried him all
the whole way home, all the way up the street with everybody looking,
his meaty hands clasped round his son's thin white thighs. For once
he'd ridden home in triumph. And he hadn't told his mam, though
he'd stood by her sick bed and listened to his father describe a visit to
the park. He'd been invited to join the great conspiracy and even at the
age of five he knew the value of it. He wasn't going to jeopardize
future outings by telling her anything.

That night he'd woken up, hot and sticky, knowing he was going to
be sick. He started to cry and after a long time his father came in,
blundering round and stubbing his toes before he found the light. He
looked up at him, the huge man, looming over the bed. Then, slowly,
erupting from his mouth, the jelly babies returned -- intact, or very
nearly so -- while his father stood and gaped.

It must have been quite a sight, Prior thought, helping Sarah out of
the cab and turning to pay the driver. Like watching a sea-horse give
birth.


Once inside the flat he lit the gas fire and made two mugs of strong
sweet tea, while Sarah went to take off her wet clothes. She came back
wearing his dressing-gown, shivering from the cold. He sat her down
between his knees and towelled her hair.

'You know you were saying about the bit you liked best? For me it's
your hair,' he said, feeling his tongue thick and unwieldy, getting in
the way of his teeth. 'It was the first thing I noticed. The different
colours.'

'You told me,' she said, twisting round. 'And you needn't make it
sound so romantic. You were wondering which colour was down
there. Weren't you?'

He smiled. 'Yes.'

They sat sipping their tea. She said, 'Well, are you going to tell me?'

'Yes.' He picked up two handfuls of hair and tugged on them. 'But
it's worse than you think. I need you to tell me what happened.'

'When?'

'On the boat.'

Her eyes widened, but she didn't argue. 'You gave your seat to that
woman and got a cup of tea and then you went and stood over by the
bar. I didn't see what happened then, I was looking at the bank. Then
the sun came out and some of the girls went out on deck and this
woman thought she ought to go and keep an eye on them. So next


359


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


time you came back there was a seat next to me. I asked you which
bridge we were going under and you didn't answer. I could see you
were in one of your moods. So I left you to it. Then when we got out,
that man in the Palm House was waiting at the top of the steps. He said
something about me - I honestly didn't hear what it was - and you hit
him. He came back at you, and you lifted your cane and you were
obviously going to brain him, so he backed off. He went across the
bridge, and you got hold of me and dragged me into the Abbey. I kept
saying, "What's the matter?" I couldn't get an answer, so I thought,
sod it. And I went off and looked at things on me own.' She waited.
'Are you telling me you don't remember all that?'

'I remember the first bit.'

'You don't remember hitting him?'

'No.'

'Who is he?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'It does bloody matter.'

'It's got nothing to do with you.'

Her face froze.

As she pulled away, he said, 'No, look, I didn't mean it like that.' He
buried his head in his hands. Till tell you all about him if you like, but
that's not the bit that matters. What matters is that I can't remember.'

'It's happened before?'

'It's been happening for oh ... two months.'

He could see her mind busily at work, trying to minimize the
significance. 'But you lost your memory once before, didn't you? I
mean, when you came back from France you said you couldn't remember
anything.' She switched to a tone of condemnation. 'You've let
yourself get run down, that's what you've done.'

'Look, I need you to tell me about it.' He tried to sound lighthearted.
'You're the first person who's met him.'

'Don't you mean "me"? Well, it is you, isn't it?'

Prior shook his head. 'You don't understand.' He leapt up and took
a piece of paper out of the top drawer of the sideboard. 'Look.'

Sarah looked down and read: Why don't you leave my fucking cigars
alone?

'I found some cigars in my pocket. I threw them away.'

'But it's your writing.'

'YES. How can I say "I" about that?'

Sarah was thinking. 'When I said it was you, I didn't just mean . . .


360


THF EYF IN THE D OO R


the obvious. I meant I ... I meant I recognized you in that mood. Do
you remember the first time we went out together? That day on the
beach.'

'Yes, of-'

'Well, you were like that then. Hating everybody. You were all
right on the train, but once we were on the beach, I don't know what
happened, you just went right away from me and I couldn't reach
you. I could feel the hatred coming off you. It was like anybody who
hadn't been to France was rubbish. Well, you were like that on the
boat. And there's no talking to you when you're in that mood. You
just despise everybody.' She hesitated. 'Including me.'

'It's not a mood, Sarah. People remember moods.'


In bed that night, coiled round her, he kissed all along her spine,
gently, so as not to wake her, his lips moving from one vertebra to the
next.

Stepping stones to sanity.

But the day after tomorrow, she would be gone.


FIFTEEN


Sarah left early on the Monday morning. They clung together by the
barrier at King's Cross, breathing in coke fumes, and did not say
goodbye.


He worked late, putting off the moment when he'd have to face the
empty flat. On his way home he kept telling himself it wouldn't be too
bad, or at least it wouldn't be as bad as he expected.

It was worse.

He wandered from room to room, searching for traces of her, trying
to convince himself a dent in the sofa cushion was where her head had
rested. He sat down and put his own head there, but this simply
provided a more painful vantage point from which to survey the
emptiness of the room.

It'll get better, he told himself.

It didn't.

*

361

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


He took to walking the streets at night in an effort to get tired enough
to sleep. London by night fascinated him. He walked along the pavements,
looking at place-names: Marble Arch, Piccadilly, Charing
Cross, Tottenham Court Road. All these places had trenches named
after them. And, gradually, as he walked through the streets of the
night city, that other city, the unimaginable labyrinth, grew around
him, its sandbag walls bleached pale in the light of a flare, until some
chance happening, a piece of paper blown across the pavement, a girl's
laugh, brought him back to a knowledge of where he was.


He got a letter from Sarah and put it on the mantelpiece, under a small
china figure of a windblown girl walking a dog, where he would see it
as soon as he came through the door.


Often, on his night-time walks, he thought about Spragge, and the
more he thought the more puzzled he became. The man's whole
sweaty, rumpled, drink-sodden appearance suggested a down-and-out,
a man blundering through life, and yet the effort required to watch the
flat and follow him all the way to Kew revealed a considerable degree
of persistence. It didn't make sense.

One obvious explanation was that he was working for Lode, but
Prior distrusted the idea. The atmosphere in the Intelligence Unit was
such that baseless suspicions were mistaken for reality at every turn. It
was like a trick picture he'd seen once, in which staircases appeared to
lead between the various floors of a building. Only very gradually did
he realize that the perspective made no sense, that the elaborate staircases
connected nothing with nothing.


His landlady, Mrs Rollaston, turned up on the doorstep, cradling her
bosom in her arms as women do when they feel threatened. 'I thought
you'd like to know there's somebody coming to do the bins. I know I
said Monday, but I just couldn't get anybody.'

She was obviously continuing a conversation.

Prior nodded, and smiled.

He could recall no occasion on which he'd spoken to Mrs Rollaston
about the bins.


He needed to see Spragge, but the address on the file, as he discovered
standing on a gritty, windswept pavement in Whitechapel, was out of
date. The bloodless girl who peered up at him from the basement, a


362


The II n EYE IN THE DOOR


grizzling baby in her arms, said she'd lived there a year and no, she
didn't know where the previous tenant had gone. The landlady might,
though.

The landlady, traced to the snug bar of the local pub, confirmed the
name had been Spragge. She didn't know where he was now. Did he know this was 
the very pub Mary Kelly had been drinking in the night
the Ripper killed her? She'd known Mary Kelly as well as she knew
her own sister, heart in one place, liver in another, intestines draped all
over the floor, in that very chair --

He bought her a port and lemon and left her to her memories. Odd,
he thought, that the fascination with the Ripper and his miserable jive victims 
should persist, when half of Europe was at it.

He was losing more time. Not in huge chunks, but frequently,
perhaps four or five times a day. In the evenings, unless he was seeing
Rivers, he stayed at home. He knew the flat was bad for him, both
physically and mentally, but he was afraid to venture out because it
seemed to give him more scope. Nonsense, of course. He could and did
go out, though sometimes the only sign was the smell of fresh air on
Prior's skin.


One morning Lode sent for him.

'I just thought I'd share the good news,' Lode said. 'Since there isn't
much of it these days. They've caught MacDowell.'

Prior was knocked sick by the shock, but he managed to keep his
face expressionless. 'Oh? When?'

'A few days ago. In Liverpool. Charles Greaves's house. They got
Greaves too.'

'Hmm. Well, that is progress.'

'Good news, isn't it?'

Prior nodded.

'You know,' Lode said, watching him narrowly, 'I used to think I
understood you. I used to think I had you taped.' He waited. 'Ah, well.
Back to work.'

Prior wondered why Lode's endless patting and petting of his moustache
should ever have struck him as a sign of vulnerability. It didn't
seem so now.

The nights were bad. He was still taking sleeping draughts, sometimes
repeating the dose when the first one failed to work. Rivers strenuously
advised him against it, but he ignored the advice. He had to sleep.

That evening, fast asleep after the second draught, he was awakened


363


THE EYE IN THE DOOR    """'


M

by a knocking on the door. The bromide clung to him like glue. Even
when he managed to get out of bed, he felt physically sick. For a
moment, as he pulled on his breeches and shirt, he thought he might
actually be sick. The knocking went on, then stopped.

Presumably whoever it was had got tired and gone away. Prior was
about to fall back into bed when he remembered he'd left the door
open. Of all the bloody stupid things to do. But it was the only way of
getting some air into the place.
It was no use, he'd have to go and close it.

The passage was full of the smell of rotting cabbage. The area round
the bins had not been cleaned, in spite of Mrs Rollaston's promise.
Prior stumbled along, hitching up his braces as he went.

The door was open. He looked out. The sky was not the normal
blue of a summer evening, but brownish, like caught butter. He went
back inside and closed the door.

He was walking past the door of the living-room when he heard a
movement.

Slowly, he pushed the half-open door wide. Spragge was sitting,
stolidly, in the armchair, thick fingers relaxed on his splayed thighs. He
looked up with a sheepish, rather silly expression on his face. Sheepish,
but obstinate. 'Well?' he said. 'What do you want to see me about?'

'Do you always walk into people's houses uninvited?'

'I thought I heard you say come in.' He didn't bother to make the lie
convincing. 'I knew you must be in because the door was open. You
want to watch that. You could get burgled.' A glance round the room
pointed out that there was nothing worth taking.

Prior was angry. Not because Spragge had walked in uninvited; it
was deeper, less rational than that. He was angry because of the way
Spragge's fingers curled on his thighs, innocent-looking fingers, the
waxy pink of very cheap sausages.

'I'll get up and knock again if you like,' Spragge said, pulling a
comical face.

'It doesn't matter,' Prior said, sitting down. 'What do you want?'

'What do you want?'

Prior looked blank.

'You're the one who's been chasing me.'

Spragge was drunk. Oh, he hid it well. There was just the merest
hint of over-precision in his speech, a kind of truculence bubbling
beneath the surface.

'What about a drink?' Prior suggested.


364


THF F. Y F. IN THE DOOR


'Yeh, all right.'

Prior needed time to think, to work out how he was going to
approach Spraggc. He went into the kitchen where he kept the whisky.
The trouble was he detested Spragge to the point where the necessary
manipulation became distasteful. You didn't manipulate people like
Spragge. You squashed them.

He poured a jug of water and, in the sudden silence after he'd turned
off the tap, heard a movement, furtive, it seemed to him, in the next
room. Rapidly, he crossed to the door.

Spragge was removing Sarah's letter from underneath the ornament
on the mantelpiece. No, not removing it. Putting it back.

'Have you read that?' Prior burst into the room. He was remembering
how explicit Sarah's references to their love-making had been.
'Have you read it?'

Spragge swallowed hard. 'It's the job.'

'You shouldn't've done that.'

'Aw, for God's sake,' Spragge said. 'Do you think she'd mind? I saw
her in the Palm House, she virtually had your dick out.'

Prior grasped Spragge lightly by the forearms and butted him in the
face, his head coming into satisfying, cartilage-crunching contact with
Spragge's nose. Spragge tried to pull away, then slumped forward,
spouting blood, snorting, putting up an ineffectual shaking hand to
stop the flow.

Prior tried to make him stand up, like a child trying to make a toy
work. Spragge staggered backwards and fell against the standard lamp,
which crashed over and landed on top of him. He lay there, holding
his spread fingers over his shattered nose, trying to speak, and gurgling
instead.

Disgusted, with himself as much as Spragge, Prior went into the
kitchen, wrung out a tea-towel in cold water, came back, and handed
it to Spragge. 'Here, put this over it.'

Wincing, tears streaming down his face, Spragge dabbed at his face
with the wet cloth. 'Broken,' he managed to say. He gestured vaguely
at the towel, which was drenched in blood. Prior took it away and
brought another. He looked at the roll of fat above Spragge's trousers
and contemplated landing a boot in his kidneys. But you couldn't, the
man was pathetic. He threw the tea-towel at Spragge and sat down in
the nearest chair, shaking with rage, unappeased. He wanted to fight. Instead 
of that he was farting about with tea-towels like Florence
fucking Nightingale.


365


1

The H F F. Y E IN The H F. DOOR


f I

After a while Spragge started to cry. Prior stared at him with awed
disgust and thought, my God, I'm not taking this. 'Come on,' he said,
grabbing Spragge by the sleeve. 'Out.'

'Can't walk.'

'I'll get you a taxi.'

Prior struggled into his boots and puttees, then returned to the
living-room and dragged Spragge to his feet. Spragge lurched and
stumbled to the door, half of his own volition, half dragged there by
Prior. Bastard, Prior thought, pushing him up the steps, but the anger
was ebbing now, leaving him lonely.

They staggered down the street, Spragge leaning heavily on Prior.
Like two drunks. 'Do you realize how much trouble I'd get into if I
was seen like this?' Prior asked.

The first two taxis went past. Spragge's face, in the brown air,
looked dingy, but less obviously bloody than it had in the flat. He
stood, swaying slightly, apart from the noise and heat, the passing
crowds, the sweaty faces. He was visibly nursing his bitterness, carrying
it around with him like a too full cup. 'Lode offered me a passage to
South Africa. Did you know that? All expenses paid.'

'Will you go?'

'Might.' He looked round him, and the bitterness spilled. 'Fuck all
here.'

Prior remembered there were things he needed to know. 'Did Lode
tell you to follow me?'

'Yes.'

'Were you following me when I went to see Hettie Roper?'

'No, not there.'

Either Spragge was a better actor than he'd so far appeared, or he
was telling the truth. Spragge started waving and shouting 'Taxi!'

It pulled up a few paces further on. Till need money,' he said.

Prior dug in his breeches pockets. 'Here, take this.'

Spragge bent down and said, 'Marble Arch.' He wasn't going to
give an address while Prior was within hearing.

'You must have been following me,' Prior said. 'It was you who
told the police where to find MacDowell.'

Spragge looked up from the dim interior. 'Not me, guv.' His tone
was ironical, indifferent. 'Lode says it was you.'


366


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


SIXTEEN


In the Empire Hospital Charles Manning surveyed the chessboard
and gently, with the tip of his forefinger, knocked over the black
king.

'You win,' he said. 'Again.'

Lucas grinned, and then pointed over Manning's shoulder to the
figure of a man in army uniform, standing just inside the entrance to
the ward.


Manning stood up. For a second there might have been a flicker of
fear. Fear was too strong a word, perhaps, but Manning certainly
wasn't at ease though he gave the usual, expensively acquired imitation
of it, coming towards Prior, offering his hand. 'Well,' he said. 'This is a
surprise.'

'How are you?'

'Getting better. Let's go along to my room.'

Manning chatted easily as they walked along the corridor. 'Remarkable
chap, that. Do you know, he can't remember the names of any of
the pieces? But, my God, he knows how to play.'

Manning's room was pleasant, with a bowl of roses on the bedside
table, and a bright, yellow and red covered book lying face down on
the bed.

'A name you'll know,' Manning said, picking it up.

Prior read the title, Counter-Attack, and the name, Siegfried Sassoon.
'You must've been at Craiglockhart at the same time,' Manning
said.

'Ye-es. Though I don't know how much of a bond that is. Frankly.'
Prior closed the book and put it on the bedside table beside a photograph
of Manning's wife and children, the same photograph that had
been on the grand piano at his house. 'He hated the place.'

'Did he?'

'Oh, yes, he made that perfectly clear. And the people. Nervous
wrecks, lead-swingers and degenerates.'

'Well,' Manning said, waving Prior to a chair, 'as one nervous,
lead-swinging degenerate to another . . . how are you?'

'All right, I think. The Intelligence Unit's being closed down, so I
don't quite know what's going to happen.'


367



1

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Manning smiled. 'I suppose you want to stay in the Ministry?'

'Not particularly.'

'Oh? Well, that might be a bit more difficult. I've got a friend at the
War Office -- Charles Moncrieff -- I don't know whether you know
him? Anyway, one of his jobs is to select instructors for cadet battalions.
I suppose that might be a possibility?'

Prior leant forward. 'Hang on a minute. I didn't come here to
brown-nose you or your fucking friend at the War Office. What I was
going to say -- if you wouldn't mind listening -- is that I want to talk to
you about something.'

'What?'

'Who. A woman called Mrs Roper. Bcattie Roper.'

Manning was looking puzzled. 'The Mrs Roper? Poison-plot
Roper?'

'Yes.' Prior got a file out of his briefcase. 'Except she didn't do it.'

Manning took the file from him. 'You want me to read it?'

'I've summarized it. It'll only take you a few minutes.'

Manning read with total concentration. When he finished he looked
up. 'Can I keep this?'

'Yes, I've got a copy. I've got copies of the documents as well.'

'You mean you've made personal copies of Ministry files?' Manning
pursed his lips. 'You certainly don't play by the rules, do you?'

'Neither do you.'

'We're in the same boat there, aren't we?' A hardening of tone. 'I
would have thought we were in exactly the same boat.'

The merest hint of a glance at the photograph. 'Not quite.'

Manning got up and walked across to the window. For a while he
said nothing. Then he turned and said, 'Why? Why on earth couldn't
you just come in and say, "Look, I'm worried about this. Will you
read the report?" All right, you've got the opening to do so because of
. . . There was no need for anything like that.'

Prior had a sudden chilling perception that Manning was right.
'Rubbish. Beattie Roper's a working-class woman from the back
streets of Salford. You don't give a fuck about her. I don't mean you
personally -- though that's true too -- I mean your class.'

Manning was looking interested now rather than angry. 'You really
do think class determines everything, don't you?'

'Whether people are taken seriously or not? Yes.'

'But it's not a question of individuals, is it? All right, I don't know
anything about women in the back streets of Salford. I don't pretend


368

THE RYF IN THF DOOR


to. I don't want to. It doesn't mean I want to see them sent to prison on
perjured evidence. Or anybody else for that matter.'

'Look, can we skip the moral outrage? When I came in here, you
assumed I was after a cushy job. I didn't even get the first bloody
sentence out. Are you seriously saying you would have made that
assumption about a person of your own class?'

'Yes.'

'I don't believe you.'

'No, I would.'

'You get dozens of them, I suppose, begging for safe jobs?'

'Yes,' Manning said bleakly.

Prior looked at him. 'Golly. What fun.'

'Not really.'

They sat in silence, each registering the change in atmosphere, neither
of them sure what it meant. 'You're right,' Manning said at last. 'It was
an insulting assumption to make. I'm sorry.'

At that moment the door opened and Rivers came in.

'Charles, I -- ' He stopped abruptly when he saw Prior. 'Hello. I'm
sorry, I didn't realize you had a visitor.' He smiled at Prior. 'I hope
you're not tiring my patient?'

'He's wearing me out,' Prior snapped.

'What did you want to see me about?' Manning asked.

Rivers said, 'Nothing that can't wait.'

He went out and left them alone.

There was a short silence. 'I'm sorry too,' Prior said. 'You're right,
of course. Class prejudice isn't any more admirable for being directed
upwards.' Just more fucking justified. 'Do you think I should show
that to her MP?'

'Oh, God, no, don't do that. Once they've denied it in the House,
it'll be set in concrete. No, I'll have a word with Eddie Marsh. Only
don't expect too much. I mean, it's perfectly clear even from your
report she was sheltering deserters. That's two years' hard labour. She's
only done one.'

'She wasn't charged with that.'

Manning said, 'They're not going to let her out yet.'

'So what will they do?'

'Wait till the war's over. Let her go quietly.'

Prior shook his head. 'She won't last that long.'


That night, at nine o'clock, Prior went out for a drink. He came to


369



THE EYE IN The H E DOOR


himself in the small hours of the morning, fumbling to get his key into
the lock. He had no recollection of the intervening five hours.


Rivers rubbed the corners of his eyes with an audible squidge. 'That's
the longest, isn't it?'

'Yes. Just.'

'Any clues? I
mean, had you been drinking?'

'Like a fish. I've still got the headache.'

Rivers replaced his glasses.

'One of the . . . how shall I put it?' Prior breathed deeply. 'Inconveniences 
of my present position is that I do tend to end up with somebody
else's hangover. Really rather frequently.'

'Not "somebody else's".'

Prior looked away. 'You've no idea how disgusting it is to examine
one's own underpants for signs of "recent activity".'

Rivers looked down at the backs of his hands. 'I'm going to say
something you probably won't like.'

The telephone began to ring in the next room.

Prior smiled. 'And I'm going to have to wait for it too.'

The call was from Captain Harris, telephoning to arrange the details
of a flight they were to make tomorrow. Rivers jotted the time down,
and took a few moments to collect his thoughts before returning to
Prior.

Prior was standing by the mantelpiece, looking through a stack of
field postcards. Well, that was all right, Rivers thought, closing the
door. Field postcards contained no information about the sender except
the fact that he was alive. Or had been at the time it was posted. 'His
book's out, you know?' Prior said, holding a postcard up. 'Manning's
got a copy.'

'Yes.'

Rivers sat down and waited for Prior to join him.

'I suppose this is the real challenge,' Prior said. 'For you. The ones who
go back. They must be the ones you ask the questions about. I mean
obviously all this face your emotions, own up to fear, let yourself feel grief
. . . works wonders. Here.' Prior came closer. Bent over him. 'But what
about there? Do you think it helps there? Or do they just go mad quicker?'

'Nobody's ever done a follow-up. Electric shock treatment has a
very high relapse rate. What mine is, I just don't know. Obviously the
patients who stay in touch are a self-selected group, and such evidence
as they provide is anecdotal, and therefore almost useless.'


37°

I
THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'My God, Rivers. You're a cold bugger.'

'You asked me a scientific question. You got a scientific answer.'

Prior sat down. 'Well dodged.'

Rivers took his glasses off. 'I'm really not trying to dodge anything.
What I was going to say is I think perhaps you should think about
coming into hospital. The '

'No. You can't order me to.'

'No, that's true. I hoped you trusted me enough to take my advice.'

Prior shook his head. 'I just can't face it.'

Rivers nodded. 'Then we'll have to manage outside. Will you at
least take some sick leave?'

Another jerk of the head. 'Not yet.'


Prior avoided thinking about the interview with Beattie Roper till he
was crossing the prison yard. She'd been on hunger strike again, the
wardress said, jangling her keys. And she'd had flu. No resistance. In
sick bay all last week. He'd find her weak. The prison doctor had
wanted to force-feed her, but the Home Office in its wisdom had
decided that such methods were not to be used.

She was thinner than he remembered.

He stood just inside the door. She was lying on the bed, the light
from the barred window casting a shadow across her face. The wardress
stood against the wall, by the closed door.

'I need to see her alone.'

He expected an argument, but the wardress withdrew immediately.

'The voice of authority, Billy.'

Mucus clung to the corners of her lips when she spoke, as if her
mouth were seldom opened.

He moved closer to the bed. 'I hear you've been ill.'

'Flu. Everybody's had it.'

He remained standing, as if he needed her permission to sit. She
nodded towards the chair.

'I've been doing what I can,' he said. 'I'm afraid it doesn't amount to
much. I was hoping Mac might be able to help, but --'

A chest movement that might have been a laugh. 'Not where he is.
You know where they've sent him, don't you? Wandsworth.'

'You see, you did shelter deserters. They think you'd do it again.'

She hoisted herself up the bed. 'Bloody right 'n' all. I might look
like a bloody scarecrow but in here' -- she tapped the side of her head -- 'I'm 
the same.'


37i


1

TUF F Y F IN The H F. DOOR


«

Outside the door the wardress coughed.

'You remember a lad called Brightmore?'

'No.'

'Go on, you do.'

He didn't, but he nodded.

'Lovely lad. They sent him to Cleethorpes. Twelve months' deten |

tion. 'Course he went on refusing to obey orders so he got twenty
eight days solitary and what they did they dug a hole, and it was
flooded at the bottom and they put him in that. Couldn't sit down,
couldn't lie down. Nothing to look at but clay walls. Somebody come
to the top of the pit and told him his pals had been shipped off to
France and shot, and if he didn't toe the line the same thing'd happen
to him. He thought his mind was going to give way. Then it started
pissing down and the hole flooded and the soldiers who were guarding
him were that sorry for him they took him out and let him sleep in a
tent. They didn't half cop it when the CO found out. Next day he was
back in the pit. If one of them soldiers hadn't given him a cigarette
packet to write on, he'd've died in there. As it was they got a letter
smuggled out '

'And the officers who did it were court-martialled. Beattie, there's a
million men in France up to their dicks in water. Who's going to get
court-martialled for that?'

'Every bloody general in France if I had my way. You're not the
only one who cares about them lads, what do you think this is about if
it's not about them?' A pause. 'What I was trying to say was compared
with a hole in the ground this is a fucking palace. And I'm lucky to be
here.'

He looked at her, seeing her heart beat visibly under the thin shift.
'Have you seen Hettie?'

'Twice. Fact, she's due today. I gather we've got you to thank for that?'

'It's nothing.'

'No, it's not nothing, Billy. It's a hell of a lot.' She hesitated. 'One
thing I should tell you -- I'm not saying / believe it, mind -- our Hettie
thinks it was a bit too much of a coincidence Mac getting picked up
the way he was. She . . .' Beattie shook her head. 'She thinks you told
them where to go.'

'That's not true.'

'No, I know it's not. It's all right, son, I'll talk to her.' '

He put his hand on her bare arm and felt the bone. 'I've got to go,'
he said.


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR

He went to the door and knocked. 'I'll see you again,' he said,
turning back to her.

She looked at him, but didn't answer.

Following the wardress across the yard, he was hardly aware of the
massive walls with their rows of barred windows. He didn't see Hettie
coming towards him, carrying a string bag, accompanied by another
wardress, until they were almost level. Then he called her name and,
reluctantly, she stopped.

The wardresses stood and watched.

Hettie came towards him. Tm surprised you've got the nerve to
show your face.'

In spite of the words he bent towards her, expecting a greeting. She
spat in his face.

The wardress grasped her arm. Wiping his cheek, slowly, not taking
his eyes off Hettie, he said, 'It's all right. Let her go.'

Each with an escort, they moved off in opposite directions, toiling
across the vast expanse of asphalt like beetles. Hettie turned before the
building swallowed her and, in a voice that cracked with despair, she
shouted, 'You bastard. What about Mac?'

Outside, Prior stared up at the building as the blood-and-bandages
facade darkened in the light drizzle. Hettie's spit seemed to burn his
skin. He raised his hand and wiped his cheek again, then turned and
began walking rapidly towards the station. A refrain beat in his head.
With every scuff and slurry of his boots on the gravel, he heard: the
bastards have won. The bastards have won. The bastards. . .


373


1

Part Three

*

>.. I


SEVENTEEN


f       Rivers had cleared the afternoon to finish a report on military training

i i     for the Medical Research Council. For days now he'd had infantry,
|       training manuals piled up on his desk, and he spent the first hour

* '     immersed in them, before going back to the last sentence he'd written.


Many of those who pass unscathed through modern warfare do so because of y      
the sluggishness of their imaginations, but if imagination is active and

« i     powerful, it is probably far better to allow it to play around the 
trials and

I [     dangers of warfare than to carry out a prolonged system of repression . 
. .


A tap on the door. Captain Bolden had attacked a nurse. Rivers did a
I       disguised run along the corridor, saw the lift was in the basement and

took the stairs three at a time. He found a group of nurses and two
|       orderlies clustered round Bolden's door. Apparently he was refusing to

j       let them in. From a babble of indignant chatter he managed to extract

'       the information that Bolden had thrown a knife at Nurse Pratt. Not a

t[      very sharp knife, and it hadn't hit her, but still a knife. Nurse Pratt 
was

one of the oldest and most experienced nurses on the ward. Unfortunately
her experience had been gained on the locked wards of large
Victorian lunatic asylums, where in any altercation between a member
of staff and a patient the patient was automatically and indisputably
wrong. One could see it so clearly from both points of view. Bolden
resorted to violence quickly and easily, but then he had spent the
past four years being trained to do exactly that. Nurse Pratt was
being asked, for the first time in a working life of thirty years, to
handle patients who were as accustomed to giving orders as to taking
them.

Rivers handed his stick to an orderly and tapped on the door. 'Can I
come in?'

A grunt, not definitely discouraging. Rivers opened the door and
walked in. Bolden was standing by the window, still angry, sheepish,
ashamed. Rivers, who was taller than Bolden, sat down, allowing
Bolden to tower over him. Bolden was a very frightened man. 'Now
then. What is it this time?'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


"I told her the beet was inedible. She said I should think myself lucky
to have it.'

'So you threw a knife?'

'I missed, didn't I?'

They talked for half an hour. Then Rivers stood up to go.

Till tell her I'm sorry,' Bolden said.

'Well, that would be a start. As long as you don't get irritated by her
response.'

'I do try,' Bolden said, glowering at him.

'I know you do. And you're right about the beef. I couldn't eat it
either.'

Rivers had a word with Sister Walters, hoping she could persuade
Nurse Pratt to receive the apology graciously, and then thought he
might as well have a word with Manning, since he was on the ward
anyway. He set off towards Manning's room, then checked, remembering
Manning was more likely to be on the neurological ward where he
had struck up a firm friendship with Lucas and a couple of other chess
fanatics. Manning was making good progress. He was almost ready to
go home.

They were playing chess. Entirely silent and absorbed. He was standing
beside them before they looked up.

Now that the discharge from Lucas's wound had stopped, his hair was
growing back, and it covered the white scalp in a dark fuzz. Rather
touching. He looked like some kind of incongruous, ungainly chick.
'How's it going?' Rivers asked, directing the question at Manning.

'I'm being trounced,' Manning said cheerfully. '19-17 in his favour.'

Lucas pointed to the board. '20--17,' he gurgled and grinned.

He certainly knew his numbers, Rivers thought, smiling as he
walked away. In an unscreened bed further down the ward one of the
pacifist orderlies was cleaning up an incontinent patient. Viggors's legs
circled continuously in an involuntary stepping movement, and it
really needed two people to change him, one to clean him up, the
other to hold his legs. He was getting liquid excrement on his heels,
and spreading it all over the bottom sheet. Martin, the orderly, was
red-faced and flustered, Viggors white with rage and shame.

Rivers stopped by the bed. 'Have you heard of screens?' he asked.

Martin looked up. 'Wantage said he was going to get them.'

Wantage was lounging in the doorway of the staff-room, smoking a
cigarette, clearly in no hurry to rescue a conchie orderly from an
impossible position. His eyes widened. 'I was just --'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'I know exactly what you're doing. Screens round that bed. Now. And get in 
there and help.' He called over his shoulder as he walked
off. 'And put that cigarette out.'

Rivers was still shaking with anger when he got back to his desk. He
made himself concentrate on the uncompleted sentence.


... if imagination is active and powerful, it is probably far better to allow it
to play around the trials and dangers of warfare than to carry out a
prolonged system of repression by which morbid energy may be stored so as
to form a kind of dump ready to explode on the occurrence of some mental
shock or bodily illness.


Exploding ammunition dumps had become a cliche, he supposed.
Still, Bolden did a very good imitation of one. He wasn't doing too
badly himself.

A tap on the door. 'No,' Rivers said. 'Whatever it is, no.'

Miss Rogers smiled. 'There was a telephone call, while you were up
on the ward. About a Captain Sassoon.'

Rivers was on his feet. 'What about him?'

'He's in the American Red Cross Hospital at Lancaster Gate with a
head wound, they said. Would you go and see him?'

'How bad is it?'

'I don't know. They didn't say.'


In the taxi going to Lancaster Gate, Rivers's own words ran round and
round in his head. If imagination is active and powerful, it is probably far
better to allow it to play around . . . He looked out of the window,
shaking his head as if to clear it. It wasn't even as if the advice were
appropriate. He didn't need imagination, for Christ's sake. He was a
neurologist. He knew exactly what shrapnel and bullets do to the brain.

The ward was a large room with ornate plasterwork, and tall windows
opening on a view of Hyde Park. Two of the beds were empty.
The others contained lightly wounded men, all looking reasonably
cheerful. On a table in the centre of the ward a gramophone was
playing a popular love song. You made me love you.

A nurse came bustling up to him. 'Who were you --'

'Captain Sassoon.'

'He's been moved to a single room. Didn't they tell you? Another
two floors, I'm afraid, but I don't think he's allowed . . .' Her eye fell
on his RAMC badges. 'Are you Dr Rivers?'

'Yes.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'I think Dr Saunders is expecting you.'

Dr Saunders was waiting outside the door of his room, a small man
with pouched cheeks, receding ginger hair and blue eyes ten years
younger than the rest of his face. 'They sent you to the main ward,' he
said, shaking hands.

Rivers followed him into the room. 'How bad is he?'

'The wound -- not bad at all. In fact, I can show you.' He took an X
ray from a file on his desk and held it to the light. Sassoon's skull stared
out at them. 'You see?' Saunders pointed to the intact bone. 'The
bullet went right across there.' He indicated the place on his own head.
'What he's got is a rather neat parting in the scalp.'

Rivers breathed out. 'Lucky man,' he said, as lightly as he could.

'I don't think he thinks so.'

They sat at opposite sides of the desk. 'I got a rather garbled message,
I'm afraid,' Rivers said. 'I wasn't clear whether you A asked me to see
him or --'

'It was me. I saw your name on the file and I thought since you'd
dealt with him before you might not mind seeing him again.' Saunders
hesitated. 'I gather he was quite an unusual patient.'

Rivers looked down at his own signature at the end of the Craiglock
hart report. 'He'd protested against the war. It was. . .' He took a deep
breath. 'Convenient to say he'd broken down.'

'Convenient for whom?'

'The War Office. His friends. Ultimately for Sassoon.'

'And you persuaded him to go back?'

'He decided to go back. What's wrong?'

'He's . . . He was all right when he arrived. Seemed to be. Then he
had about eight visitors all at his bed at the one time. The hospital rules
say two. But the nurse on duty was very young and apparently she felt
she couldn't ask them to leave. She won't make that mistake again.
Anyway, by the time they finally did leave he was in a terrible state.
Very upset. And then he had a bad night -- everybody had a bad night
- and we decided to try a single room and no visitors.'

'Is he depressed?'

'No. Rather the reverse. Excitable. Can't stop talking. And now
he's got nobody to talk to.'

Rivers smiled. 'Perhaps I'd better go along and provide an
audience.'


Deep-carpeted corridors, gilt-framed pictures on the wall. He followed


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Saunders, remembering the corridors of Craiglockhart. Dark,
draughty, smelling of cigarettes. But this was oppressive too, in its
airless, cushioned luxury. He looked out of a window into a deep dark
well between two buildings. A pigeon stood on a window-sill, one
cracked pink foot curled round the edge of the abyss.

Saunders said, 'He seems to have a good patch in the afternoon. He
might be asleep.' He opened the door softly and they went in.

Sassoon was asleep, his face pale and drawn beneath the cap of
bandages. 'Shall I --' Saunders whispered, pointing to Sassoon.

'No, leave him. I'll wait.'

'I'll leave you to it, then,' Saunders said, and withdrew.

Rivers sat down by the bed. There was another bed in the room,
but it was not made up. Flowers, fruit, chocolate, books were piled up
on the bedside table. He did not intend to wake Siegfried, but gradually
some recollection of whispered voices began to disturb the shuttered
face. Siegfried moistened his lips and a second later opened his eyes. He
focused them on Rivers, and for a moment there was joy, followed
immediately by fear. He stretched out his hand and touched Rivers's
sleeve. He's making sure I'm real, Rivers thought. A rather revealing
gesture.

The hand slid down and touched the back of his hand. Siegfried
swallowed, and started to sit up. 'I'm glad to see you,' he said, offering
his hand. 'I thought for a mo --' He checked himself. 'They won't let
you stay,' he said, smiling apologetically. 'I'm not allowed to see
anybody.'

'No, it's all right. They know I'm here.'

'I suppose it's because you're a doctor,' Siegfried said, settling back.
'They wouldn't let Lady Ottoline in, I heard Mrs Fisher talking to her
in the corridor.'

His manner was different, Rivers thought. Talkative, restless, rapid
speech, and he was looking directly at Rivers, something he almost
never did, particularly at the beginning of a meeting. But he seemed
perfectly rational, and the changes were within normal bounds. 'Why
won't they let you see anybody?'

'It's because of Sunday, everybody came, Robert Ross, Meicklejon,
Sitwell, oh God, Eddie Marsh, and they were all talking about the
book and I got excited and --' He raised his hands to his forehead.
'FIZZLE. POP. I had a bad night, kept everybody awake, and they
put me in here.'

'How was last night?'


381


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Siegfried pulled a face. 'Bad. I keep thinking how big it is, the war, and how 
impossible it is to write about, and how useless it is to get
angry, that's such a trivial reaction, it doesn't, it just doesn't do any
sort of justice to the to the to the tragedy, you know you spend your
entire life out there obsessed with this tiny little sector of the Front, I
mean thirty yards of sandbags, that's the war, you've no conception of
anything else, and now I think I can see all of it, vast armies, flares
going up, millions of people, millions, millions.'

Rivers waited. 'You say you see it?'

'Oh, yes, it just unfolds.' A circling movement of his arms. 'And it's
marvellous in a way, but it's terrible too and I get so frightened
because you'd have to be Tolstoy.' He gripped Rivers's hand. 'I've got
to see Ross, I don't care about the others, but you've got to make
them let me see him, he looks awful, that bloody bloody bloody trial. Do
you know Lord Alfred Douglas called him "the leader of all the
sodomites in London"? Only he said it in the witness-box, so Robbie
can't sue.'

'Just as well, perhaps.'

'And he's been asked to resign from all his committees, I mean he
offered, but it was accepted with alacrity. I've got to see him. Apart
from anything else he brings me the reviews.'

'They're good, aren't they? I've been looking out for them.'

'Most of them.'

Rivers smiled. 'You can't write a controversial book and expect
universal praise, Siegfried.'

'Can't I?'

They laughed, and for a moment everything seemed normal. Then
Siegfried's face darkened. 'Do you know we actually sat in dug-outs in
France and talked about that trial? The papers were full of it, I think it
was the one thing that could have made me glad I was out there, I
mean, for God's sake, the Germans on the Marne, five thousand prisoners
taken and all you read in the papers is who's going to bed with
whom and are they being blackmailed? God.'

'I'll see what I can do about Ross.'

'Do you think they'll listen to you?'

Rivers hesitated. 'I think they might.' Obviously Siegfried didn't
know he'd been called in professionally. 'How's the head?'

A spasm of contempt. 'It's a scratch. I should never've let them send
me back, do you know that's the last thing I said to my servant, "I'm


382


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


coming back." "Back in three weeks," 1 yelled at him as I was being
driven away. And then I let myself be corrupted.'

'Corrupted? That's a harsh word, isn't it?'

'I should've refused to come back.'

'Siegfried, nobody would have listened to you if you had. Head
injuries have to be taken seriously.'

'But don't you see, the timing was perfect? Did you see my poem in
the Nation'? "I Stood with the Dead". Well, there you are. Or there I
was rather, perched on the top-most bough, carolling away. BANG!
Oops! Sorry. Missed.'

'I'm glad it did.'

A bleak sideways glance from Siegfried. 'I'm not.'

Silence.

'I feel amputated. I don't belong here. I keep looking at all this . . .'
The waving hand took in fruit, flowers, chocolates. 'I just wish I could
parcel it up and send it out to them. I did manage to send them a
gramophone. Then I got . . . ill.'

'You know, what I don't understand,' Rivers said, 'is how you
could possibly have been wounded there.'

'I was in No Man's Land."

'No, I meant under the helmet.'

'I'd taken it off.' An awkward pause. 'We'd been out to lob some
hand-grenades at a machine-gun, two of us, they were getting cheeky,
you see, they'd brought it too far forward, and so we ..." He smiled
faintly. 'Re-established dominance. Anyway, we threw the grenades, I
don't think we hit anybody - by which I mean there were no screams
-- and then we set off back and by this time it was getting light, and I
was so happy.' His face blazed with exultation. 'Oh, God, Rivers, you
wouldn't believe how happy. And I stood up and took the helmet off,
and I turned to look at the German lines. And that's when the bullet
got me.'

Rivers was so angry he knew he had to get away. He walked across
to the window and stared, unseeing, at the road, the railings, the
distant glitter of the Serpentine under the summer sun. He had been
lying to himself, he thought, pretending this was merely one more
crisis in a busy working day. This anger stripped all pretence away
from him. ' Why?' he said, turning back to Siegfried.

'I wanted to see them.'

'You mean you wanted to get killed.'


383


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'No.'

'You stand up in the middle of No Man's Land, in the morning, the
sun rising, you take off your helmet, you turn to face the German
lines, and you tell me you weren't trying to get killed.'

Siegfried shook his head. 'I've told you, I was happy.'

Rivers took a deep breath. He walked back to the bed, schooling
himself to a display of professional gentleness. 'You were happy?'

'Yes, I was happy most of the time, I suppose mainly because I've
succeeded in cutting off the part of me that hates it.' A faint smile.
'Except when writing poems for the Nation. I was . . . There's a book
you ought to read. I'll try to dig it out, it says something to the effect
that a man who makes up his mind to die takes leave of a good many
things, and is, in some sense, dead already. Well, I had made up my
mind to die. What other solution was there for me? But making up
your mind to die isn't the same as trying to get killed. Not that it made
much difference.' He touched the bandage tentatively. 'I must say, I
thought the standard of British sniping was higher than this.'

'British sniping?'

'Yes, didn't they tell you? My own NCO. Mistook me for the
German army, rushed out into No Man's Land shouting, "Come on,
you fuckers," and shot me.' He laughed. 'God, I've never seen a man
look so horrified.'

Rivers sat down by the bed. 'You'll never be closer.'

'I've been closer. Shell landed a foot away. Literally. Didn't explode.'
Siegfried twitched suddenly, a movement Rivers had seen many thousands
of times in other patients, too often surely for it to be shocking.

'You can't get shell-shock, can you?' Siegfried asked. 'From a shell
that doesn't explode?'

Rivers looked down at his hands. 'I think that one probably did a
fair amount of damage.'

Siegfried looked towards the window. 'You know, they're going
on a raid soon, Jowett, five or six of the others, my men, Rivers, my
men, men / trained and I'm not going to be there when they come
back.'

'They're not your men now, Siegfried. They're somebody else's
men. You've got to let go.'

'I can't.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


EIGHTEEN


Rivers had been invited to dinner with the Heads, and arrived to find
the Haddons and Grafton Elliot Smith already there. No opportunity
for private conversation with Henry or Ruth presented itself until the
end of the evening, when Rivers contrived that he should be the last to
leave. It was not unusual after a dinner with the Heads for him to stay
behind enjoying their particular brand of unmalicious gossip, well
aware that his own foibles and frailties would be dissected as soon as he
left, and sure enough of their love for him not to mind.

Not that he was inclined to gossip tonight. As soon as they were
alone, he told them about Siegfried, clarifying his own perception of
the situation as he spoke.

'Excited, you say?' Henry asked.

'Yes.'

'Manic?'

'Oh, no, nowhere near. Though there was a hint of ... elation, I
suppose, once or twice, particularly when he was talking about his
feelings immediately before he was wounded. And the afternoons are his best 
time. Apparently the nights are bad. I've promised I'll go back.
In fact, I ought to be going.' He stood up. 'I'm not worried. He'll be all
right.'

'Does he regret going back?' Ruth asked.

'I don't know,' Rivers said. 'I haven't asked.'

After seeing Rivers off, Head came back into the living-room to
find Ruth gazing reflectively into the fire.

'No, well, he wouldn't, would he?' she said, looking up.

'He might think there wasn't much point,' Henry said, sitting down
on the other side of the fire.

A long, companionable silence. They were too replete with company
and conversation to want to talk much, too comfortable to make the
move for bed.

'He came to see me last year, you know,' Henry said. 'Almost a sort
of consultation. He got himself into quite a state over Sassoon.'

'Yes, I know. I didn't realize he'd talked to you about it.'

Head hesitated. 'I think he suddenly realized he was using ... his
professional skills, if you like, to defuse a situation that wasn't . . . 
medical. There's really nothing else you can do if you're a doctor in the


385


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


army in wartime. There's always the possibility of conflict between
what the army needs and what the patient needs, but with Sassoon it
was . . . very sharp. I told him basically not to be silly.'

Ruth gave a surprised laugh. 'Poor Will.'

'No, I meant it.'

'I'm sure you did, but you wouldn't have said it to a patient.'

'I told him Sassoon was capable of making up his own mind, and
that his influence probably wasn't as great as he thought it was. I
thought he was being ... I don't know. Not vain --'

'Over-scrupulous?'

'Frankly, I thought he was being neurotic. But I've seen him with a
lot of patients since then, and I'm not so sure. You know how you get
out of date with people if you haven't seen them for a while? I think I
was out of date. Something happened to him in Scotland. Somehow
or other he acquired this enormous power over young men, people
generally perhaps, but particularly young men. It really is amazing,
they'll do anything for him. Even get better.'

'Even go back to France?'

'Yes, I think so.'

Ruth shrugged slightly. 'I don't see the change. But then I suspect
he's always shown a slightly different side to me anyway.' She smiled.
'I'm very fond of him, but --'

'He is of you.'

'I sometimes wonder why we even like each other, you know.
When you think how it started. You going to Cambridge every weekend
so he could stick pins in your arm. I never had a weekend with
you the whole of the first year we were married.'

'It wasn't as bad as that. Anyway, you got on all right.'

'Do you think he still thinks Sassoon went back because of him?'

Head hesitated. 'I think he knows the extent of his influence.'

'Hmm,' Ruth said. 'Do you think he's in love with him?'

'He's a patient.'

Ruth smiled and shook her head. 'That's not an answer.'

Head looked at her. 'Yes, it is. It has to be.'


Siegfried was sitting up in bed, pyjama jacket off, face and chest
gleaming with sweat. 'Is it hot, Rivers?' he asked, as if their conversation
had never been interrupted. 'Or is it just me?'

'Warm.'

'I'm boiling. I've been sitting here simmering like a kettle.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Rivers sat down beside the bed.

'I've been writing to Graves. In verse. Do you want to read it?'

Rivers took the notepad and found himself reading an account of
his visit that afternoon. The pain was so intense that for a moment he
had to keep quite still. 'Is that how you see me?' he said at last.
'Somebody who's going to make you go back to France till you break
down altogether?'

'Yes,' Sassoon said cheerfully. 'But that's all right, I want you to.
You're my external conscience, Rivers, my father confessor. You can't
let me down now, you've got to make me go back.'

Rivers read the poem again. 'You shouldn't send this.'

'Why not? It took me ages. Oh, I know what it is, you don't think I
should say all that about the lovely soldier lads. Well, they are lovely.
You think Graves is going to be shocked. Frankly, Rivers, I don't care;
shocking Graves is one of my few remaining pleasures. I wrote to him
-- not to shock him --just an ordinary letter, only I made the mistake of
talking with enthusiasm about training in one paragraph, and in the
next paragraph I said what a bloody awful business the war was, and
what do I get back? A lecture on consistency, oh, and some very
pathetic reproaches about not terrifying your friends by pretending to
be mad, I thought that was particularly rich. I've done one totally
consistent, totally sane thing in my life, and that was to protest against
the war. And who stopped me?'

Graves, Rivers thought. But not only Graves. It was true, he saw it
now, perhaps more clearly than he had at the time, that whatever the public 
meaning of Siegfried's protest, its private meaning was derived
from a striving for consistency, for singleness of being in a man whose
internal divisions had been dangerously deepened by the war.

'You mustn't blame Graves. He did what --'

'I don't blame him, I'm just not prepared to be lectured by him. I
survive out there by being two people, sometimes I even manage to be
both of them in one evening. You know, I'll be sitting with Stiffy and
Jowett -Jowett is beautiful - and I'll start talking about wanting to go
and fight, and I'll get them all fired up and banging the table and
saying, yes, enough of training, time to get stuck in to the real thing.
And then I leave them and go to my room and think how young they
are. Nineteen, Rivers. Nineteen. And they've no bloody idea. Oh,
God, I hope they live.'

Suddenly, he started to cry. Wiping the back of his hand across his
mouth, he sniffed and said, 'Sorry.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'That's all right.'

'You know what finally put the kibosh on my Jekyll and Hyde
performance, no, listen, this is funny. I got a new second in command.
Pinto. Absolute jewel. But the first time I met him he was reading 
Counter-Attack, and he looked up and said, "Are you the same Sas
soon?" My God, Rivers, what a bloody question. But of course I said,
"Yes." What else could I say? And yet do you know I think that's
when things started to unravel.' A marked change in tone. 'It was
when I faced up to how bloody stupid it was.'

Rivers looked puzzled. 'What was?'

'My pathetic little formula for getting myself back to France.' He
adopted a mincing, effeminate tone. '"I'm not going back to kill
people. I'm only going back to look after some men."' His own voice.
'Why didn't you kick me in the head, Rivers? Why didn't you put me
out of my misery?'

Rivers made himself answer. 'Because I was afraid if you started
thinking about that, you wouldn't go back at all.'

He might as well not have spoken. 'You've only got to read the
training manual. "A commander must demand the impossible and not
think of sparing his men. Those who fall out must be left behind and
must no more stop the pursuit than casualties stopped the assault."
That's it. Expendable, interchangeable units. That's what I went back
to "look after".' A pause. 'All I wanted was to see them through their
first tour of duty and I couldn't even do that.'

'Pinto's there,' Rivers said tentatively.

'Oh, yes, and he's good. He's really good.'

Siegfried's face and neck were running with sweat. 'Shall I open the
window?' Rivers asked.

'Please. They keep shutting it, I don't know why.'

Rivers went to open the window. Behind him, Siegfried said, 'I'm
sorry you don't like my lovely soldier lads.'

'I didn't say I didn't like them. I said you shouldn't send them.'

'There was one in particular.'

'Jowett,' said Rivers.

'I wrote a poem about Jowett. Not that he'll ever know. He was
asleep. He looked as if he were dead.' A silence. 'It's odd, isn't it, how
one can feel fatherly towards somebody, I mean, genuinely fatherly, not
exploiting the situation or even being tempted to, and yet there's this
other current. And I don't think one invalidates the other. I think it's
perfectly possible for them both to be genuine.'


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'Yes,' said Rivers, with the merest hint of dryness, 'I imagine so.' He
came back to the bed. 'You say things "started to unravel"?'

'Yes, because I'd always coped with the situation by blocking out
the killing side, cutting it off, and then suddenly one's brought face to
face with the fact that, no, actually there's only one person there and
that person is a potential killer of Huns. That's what our CO used to
call us. It had a very strange effect. I mean, I went out on patrol, that
sort of thing, but I've always done that, I've never been able to sit in a
trench, it's not courage, I just can't do it, but this time it was different
because I wasn't going out to kill or even to test my nerve, though that
did come into it. I just wanted to see. I wanted to see the other side. I
used to spend a lot of time looking through the periscope. It was a
cornfield. Farmland. Sometimes you'd see a column of smoke coming
up from the German lines, but quite often you'd see nothing.' A pause,
then he said casually, 'I went across once. Dropped down into the
trench and walked along, and there were four Germans standing by a
machine-gun. One of them turned round and saw me.'

'What happened?'

'Nothing. We just looked at each other. Then he decided he ought
to tell his friends. And I decided it was time to leave.'

A tense silence.

'I suppose I should have killed him,' Siegfried said.

'He should certainly have killed you.'

'He had the excuse of surprise. You know, Rivers, it's no good
encouraging people to know themselves and . . . face up to their emotions,
because out there they're better off not having any. If people are
going to have to kill, they need to be brought up to expect to have to
do it. They need to be trained not to care because if you don't . . .'
Siegfried gripped Rivers's hand so tightly that his face clenched with
the effort of concealing his pain. 'It's too cruel.'

Rivers had been with Siegfried for over an hour and so far nothing
had been said that might not equally well have been dealt with at some
more convenient time of day. But now, his excitement began to increase,
words tripped him up, his mind stumbled along in the wake of
his ideas, trying desperately to catch up. He spoke of the vastness of the
war, of the impossibility of one mind encompassing it all. Again and
again he spoke of the need to train boys to kill; from earliest childhood,
he said, they must be taught to expect nothing else and they must
never never be allowed to question what lies ahead. All this was mixed
in with his anxieties about the raid Jowett and the others were going


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on. He spoke so vividly and with so much detail that at times he
clearly believed himself to be in France.

There was no point arguing with any of this. It took Rivers three
hours to calm him down and get him to sleep. Even after his breathing
had become steady, Rivers went on sitting by the bed, afraid to move
in case the withdrawal of his hand should cause him to wake. Long
hairs on the back of Siegfried's forearm caught the light. Rivers looked
at them, too exhausted to think clearly, remembering the experiments
he and Head had done on the pilomotor reflex. Head's hairs had
become erect every time he read a particular poem. The holy shiver, as
the Germans call it. For Head it was awakened by poetry; for Rivers,
more than once, it had been the beauty of a scientific hypothesis, one
that brought into unexpected harmony a whole range of disparate
facts. What had intrigued Rivers most was that human beings should
respond to the highest mental and spiritual achievements of their culture
with the same reflex that raises the hairs on a dog's back. The epicritic
grounded in the protopathic, the ultimate expression of the unity we
persist in regarding as the condition of perfect health. Though why we
think of it like that, God knows, since most of us survive by cultivating
internal divisions.

Siegfried was now deeply asleep. Cautiously, Rivers withdrew his
hand, flexing the fingers. It had grown colder and Siegfried had fallen
asleep outside the covers. Rivers went to shut the window, and stood
for a moment attempting to arrange the story he'd been told into a
coherent pattern, but that wasn't possible, though the outline was clear
enough. Siegfried had always coped with the war by being two people: the 
anti-war poet and pacifist; the bloodthirsty, efficient company
commander. The dissociation couldn't be called pathological, since
experience gained in one state was available to the other. Not just available: 
it was the serving officer's experience that furnished the raw
material, the ammunition, if you liked, for the poems. More importantly,
and perhaps more ambiguously, that experience of bloodshed
supplied the moral authority for the pacifist's protest: a soldier's 
declaration.
No wonder Pinto's innocent question had precipitated something
of a crisis.

Though he would have broken down anyway this time, Rivers
thought. He had gone back hating the war, turning his face away from
the reality of killing and maiming, and as soon as that reality was borne
in upon him, he had found the situation unbearable. All of which
might have been foreseen. Had been foreseen.


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Night had turned the window into a black mirror. His face floated
there, and behind it, Siegfried and the rumpled bed. If Siegfried's
attempt at dissociation had failed, so had his own. He was finding it
difficult to be both involved and objective, to turn steadily on Siegfried
both sides of medicine's split face. But that was his problem. Siegfried
need never be aware of it.

It was still dark. A light wind stirred the black trees in the park. He
took his boots off and climbed on to the other bed, not expecting to be
able to sleep, but thinking that at least he might rest. He closed his
eyes. At first his thoughts whirred on, almost as active as Siegfried's
and not much more coherent. For some reason the situation reminded
him of sleeping on board the deck of a tramp steamer travelling between
the islands of Melanesia. There, one slept in a covered cabin on
deck, on a bench that left vertical stripes down one's back, surrounded
by fellow passengers, and what a motley assemblage they were. He
remembered a particular voyage when one of his companions had
been a young Anglican priest, so determined to observe holy modesty
in these difficult conditions that he'd washed the lower part of his body
underneath the skirt of his cassock, while Rivers stripped off and had
buckets of water thrown over him by the sailors who came up to swab
the deck.

His other companion on that trip had been a trader who rejoiced in
the name of Seamus O'Dowd, though he had no trace of an Irish
accent. O'Dowd drank. In the smoky saloon after dinner, belching gin
and dental decay into Rivers's face, he had boasted of his exploits as a
blackbirder, for he'd started life kidnapping natives to work on the
Queensland plantations. Now he simply cheated them. His most recent
coup had been to convince them that the great Queen (nobody in the
Condominion dared tell the natives Victoria was dead) found their
genitals disgusting, and could not sleep easy in her bed at Windsor
until they were covered by the long Johns that Seamus had inadvertently
bought as part of a job lot while even more drunk than usual.

They wore them on their heads, Rivers remembered. It had been a
feature of the island in that first autumn of the war, naked young men
wearing long Johns elaborately folded on their heads. They looked
beautiful. Meanwhile, in England, other young men had been rushing
to don a less flattering garb.

Drifting between sleep and waking, Rivers remembered the smells
of oil and copra, the cacophony of snores and whistles from the sleepers
crammed into the small cabin on deck, the vibration of the engine that


39i


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


seemed to get into one's teeth, the strange, brilliant, ferocious southern
stars. He couldn't for the life of him think what was producing this
flood of nostalgia. Perhaps it was his own experience of duality that
formed the link, for certainly in the years before the war he had
experienced a splitting of personality as profound as any suffered by
Siegfried. It had been not merely a matter of living two different lives,
divided between the dons of Cambridge and the missionaries and
headhunters of Melanesia, but of being a different person in the two
places. It was his Melanesian self he preferred, but his attempts to
integrate that self into his way of life in England had produced nothing
but frustration and misery. Perhaps, contrary to what was usually
supposed, duality was the stable state; the attempt at integration, dangerous.
Certainly Siegfried had found it so.

He raised himself on his elbow and looked at Siegfried, who was
sleeping with his face turned to the window. Perhaps the burst of
nostalgia was caused by nothing more mysterious than this: the attempt
to sleep in a room where another person's breathing was audible.
Sleeping in the same room as another person belonged with his Melanesian
self. In England it simply didn't happen. But it was restful, the rise
and fall of breath, like the wash of waves round the prow of the boat,
and gradually, as the light thinned, he drifted off to sleep.

He woke to find Siegfried kneeling by his bed. The window was
open, the curtains lifting in the breeze. A trickle of bird-song came
into the room.

In a half-embarrassed way, Siegfried said, 'I seem to have talked an
awful lot of rubbish last night.' He looked cold and exhausted, but
calm. 'I suppose I had a fever?'

Rivers didn't reply.

'Anyway, I'm all right now.' Diffidently, he touched Rivers's sleeve.
'I don't know what I'd do without you.'


NINETEEN


A week later Rivers was sitting in his armchair in front of the fire,
feeling physically tired in an almost sensuous way. This was a rare
feeling with him, since most days produced a grating emotional exhaus


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tioii which was certainly not conducive to sleep. But he had been
flying, which always tired him out physically, and he'd seen Siegfried a
lot calmer and happier than he had recently been, though still very far
from well.

Prior was the mystery. Prior had missed an appointment, something
he'd never done before, and Rivers wasn't sure what he should do
about it. There was little he could do except drop Prior a line expressing
his continued willingness to help, but there had been some suggestion
that Prior worried about the degree of his dependence. If he had
decided to break off the association there was nothing Rivers could -- or 
should -- do about it. He wouldn't come now. He was over two
hours late.

Rivers was just thinking he really must make the effort to do
something when there was a tap on the door, and the maid came in.
'There's a Mr Prior to see you,' she said, sounding doubtful, for it was
very late. 'Shall I tell him --'

'No, no. Ask him to come up.'

He felt very unfit to cope with this, whatever it was, but he buttoned
his tunic and looked vaguely around for his boots. Prior seemed to be
climbing the stairs very quickly, an easy, light tread quite unlike his
usual step. His asthma had been very bad on his last visit. He had
paused several times on the final flight of stairs and even then had
entered the room almost too breathless to speak. The maid must have
misheard the name, that or --

Prior came into the room, pausing just inside the door to look
round.

'Are you all right?' Rivers asked.

'Yes. Fine.' He looked at the clock and seemed to become aware that
the lateness of the hour required some explanation. 'I had to see you.'

Rivers waved him to a chair and went to close the door.

'Well,' he said, when Prior was settled. 'Your chest's a lot better.'

Prior breathed in. Testing. He looked hard at Rivers and nodded.

'You were going to go to the prison last time we spoke,' Rivers
said. 'To see Mrs Roper. Did you go?'

Prior was shaking his head, though not, Rivers thought, in answer
to the question. At last he said, in a markedly sibilant voice, 'I didn't
think you would have pretended.'

'Pretended what?' Rivers asked. He waited, then prompted gently,
'What am I pretending?'

'That we've met before.'


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR

^fe4

Momentarily, Rivers closed his eyes. When he opened them again
Prior was grinning. 'I thought of saying, "Dr Rivers, I presume?"'

'If we haven't met before, how did you know me?'

'I sit in.' Prior spread his hands. '/ sit in. Well, let's face it, there's not
a lot of choice, is there? I don't know how you put up with him. /
couldn't. Are you sure it's a good idea to let him get away with it?'

'With what?'

'With being so cheeky.'

'The sick have a certain licence,' Rivers said dryly.

'Oh, and he is sick, isn't he?' Prior said earnestly, leaning forward.
'Do you know, I honestly believe he's getting worse?

A long silence. Rivers clasped his hands under his chin. 'Do you
think you could manage to say "I"?'

' 'Fraid not. No.'

The antagonism was unmistakable. Rivers was aware of having seen
Prior in this mood before, in the early weeks at Craiglockhart. Exactly
this. The same incongruous mixture of effeminacy and menace.

'You know, it's really quite simple,' Prior went on. 'Either we can
sit here and have a totally barren argument about which pronouns
we're going to use, or we can talk. I think it's more important to
talk.'

'I agree.'

'Good. Do you mind if I smoke?'

'I never do mind, do I?'

Prior was patting his tunic pockets. Till kill him,' he said smiling.
'Ah, no, it's all right.' He held up a packet of cigars. 'I've got him
trained. He used to throw them away.'

'What would you like to talk about?'

A broad smile. 'I thought you might have some ideas.'

'You say you "sit in". Does that mean you know everything he
knows?'

'Yes. But he doesn't know anything I know. Only it's . . . it's not
quite as neat as that. Sometimes I see things he can't see, even when
he's there.'

'Things he doesn't notice?'

'Doesn't want to notice. Like for example he hates Spragge. I mean,
he has perfectly good reasons for disliking him, but what he feels goes a
long way beyond that. And he knows that, and he doesn't know why,
even though it's staring him in the face. Literally. Spragge's like his
father.'


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'Like his own -- like Spragge's father?'

'No. Well, he may be. How would / know? Like Billy's father. I
mean, it's a really striking resemblance, and he just doesn't see it.' Prior
paused, puzzled by some quality in Rivers's silence. 'You see what I
mean?'

'His father?'

'Yes.'

'Are you really saying he's not your father?'

'Of course he isn't. How could he be?'

'How could he not be? In the end one body begets another.'

Prior's expression hardened. 'I was born two years ago. In a shell
hole in France. I have no father.'

Rivers felt he needed time to think. A week would have been about
right. He said, 'I met Mr Prior at Craiglockhart.'

'Yes, I know.'

'He mentioned hitting Billy. Was that a frequent occurrence?'

'No. Oddly enough.'

'How do you know?'

'I've told you. I know everything he knows.'

'So you have access to his memories?'

'Yes.'

'And you also have your own memories.'

That's right.'

'Why "oddly"?'

A blank look.

'You said it was odd his father didn't beat him.'

'Just because when you look at the relationship you think there must
have been something like that. But there wasn't. Once his parents were
having a row and he went downstairs and tried to get between them,
and his father picked him up and threw him on the sofa. Only, being a
bit the worse for wear, he missed the sofa and hit the wall.' Prior
laughed. 'He never went down again.'

'So he just used to lie in bed and listen.'

'No, he used to get up and sit on the stairs.'

'What was he feeling?'

'I'm not good on feelings, Rivers. You'd better ask him.'

'Does that mean you don't know what he was feeling?'

'Angry. He used to do this.' Prior banged his clenched fist against
the palm of the other hand. 'PIG PIG PIG PIG. And then he'd get
frightened, I suppose he was frightened that if he got too angry he'd go


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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


downstairs. So he fixed his eyes on the barometer and blotted everything
out.'

'Then what happened?'

'Nothing. He wasn't there.'

'Who was there?'

Prior shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know. Somebody who didn't
care.'

'Not you?'

'No, I told you '

'You were born in a shell-hole.' A pause. 'Can you tell me about it?'

An elaborate shrug. 'There isn't much to tell. He was wounded. Not
badly, but it hurt. He knew he had to go on. And he couldn't. So I
came.'  i

Again that elusive impression of childishness. 'Why were you able to    «

go on when he couldn't?'

'I'm better at it.'

'Better at. . .?'

'Fighting.'

' Why are you better?'

'Oh, for God's sake '

'No, it isn't a stupid question. You're not taller, you're not stronger,
you're not faster . . . you're not better trained. How could you be? So
why are you better?'

'I'm not frightened.'

'Everybody's frightened sometimes.'

'I'm not. And I don't feel pain.'

'I see. So you didn't feel the wound?'

'No.' Prior looked at Rivers, narrowing his eyes. 'You don't believe
a bloody word of this, do you?'

Rivers couldn't bring himself to reply.

'Look.' Prior drew strongly on his cigar, until the tip glowed red,
then, almost casually, stubbed it out in the palm of his left hand. He
leant towards Rivers, smiling. 'This isn't acting, Rivers. Watch the
pupils,' he said, pulling down the lid of one eye.

The room filled with the smell of burning skin.

'And now you can have your little blue-eyed boy back.'

A withdrawn, almost drugged look, like extreme shock or the beginning
of orgasm. Then, abruptly, the features convulsed with pain, and
Prior, teeth chattering uncontrollably, raised his shaking hand and

rocked it against his chest.

*

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THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'I haven't got any pain-killers,' Rivers said.'You'd better drink this.'

Prior took the brandy and held out his other hand for Rivers to
complete the dressing. 'Aren't you going to tell me what happened?'
he said.

'You burnt yourself.'

'Why?'

Rivers sighed. 'It was a dramatic gesture that went wrong.'

He'd decided not to tell Prior about the loss of normal sensation. It
was a common symptom of hysterical disorders, but knowledge of it
would only serve to reinforce Prior's belief that the alternating state of
consciousness was a monster with whom he could have nothing in
common.

'What was he like?' Prior asked.

'What were you like? Bloody-minded.'

'Violent?'

'Well, yes. Obviously,' Rivers said, indicating the burn.

'No, I meant --'

'Did you take a swing at me? No.' Rivers smiled. 'Sorry.'

'You make it sound as if it's something I want.'

Rivers was thinking deeply. 'I think that's true,' he said, knotting
the ends of the bandage.

'No. Why should I want it? It's creating bloody havoc.'

'You know, Billy, the really interesting thing about tonight is that
you turned up in the other state. I mean that while in the other state you
still wanted to keep the appointment.'

'What did you call me?'

'Billy. Do you mind? I -- '

'No, it's just that it's the first time. Did you know that? Sassoon was
Siegfried. Anderson was Ralph. I noticed the other day you called
Manning Charles. I was always "Prior". In moments of exasperation I
was Mister Prior.'

'I'm sorry, I --' Oh, God, Rivers thought. Prior was incapable of
interpreting that as anything other than snobbery. And perhaps it had
been. Partly. Though it had been more to do with his habit of sneering
suggestiveness. 'I'd no idea you minded.'

'No, well, you're not very perceptive, are you? Anyway, it doesn't
matter.' He stood up. 'I'd better be off.'

'You can't go now, the trains have stopped. And, in any case, you're
in no state to be on your own. You'd better sleep here.'

Prior hesitated. 'All right.'


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'I'll make up the bed.'

Rivers saw Prior settled for the night, then went to his own room,
telling himself it would be fatal, at this late hour, to attempt any
assessment of Prior's situation. That must wait till morning. But the
effort of not thinking about Prior proved almost equally disastrous,
for he drifted off into a half-dreaming state, the only condition, apart
from feverish illness, in which he had normal powers of visualization.
He tossed and turned, scarcely aware of his surroundings, while persistent
images floated before him. France. Craters, a waste of mud,
splintered trees. Once he woke and lay looking into the darkness,
faintly amused that his identification with his patients should have
reached the point where he dreamt their dreams rather than his own.
He heard the church bell chime three, and then sank back into his
half-sleep. This was a dreadful place. Nothing human could live here.
Nothing human did. He was entirely alone, until, with a puckering
of the surface, a belch of foul vapours, the mud began to move, to
gather itself together, to rise and stand before him in the shape of a
man. A man who turned and began striding towards England. He
tried to call out, no, not that way, and the movement of his lips half
woke him. But he sank down again, and again the mud gathered
itself into the shape of a man, faster and faster until it seemed the
whole night was full of such creatures, creatures composed of Flanders
mud and nothing else, moving their grotesque limbs in the direction
of home.

Sunlight was streaming into the room. Rivers lay thinking about
the dream, then switched his thoughts to yesterday evening. In the
fugue state (though it was more than that) Prior had claimed to feel
no pain and no fear, to have been born in a shell-hole, to have no
father. Presumably no relationships that pre-dated that abnormal
birth.
To feel no pain and no fear in a situation that seemed to call for both
was not impossible, or even abnormal. He'd been in such a state himself,
once, while on his way to the Torres Straits, suffering from severe
sunburn, severe enough to have burnt the skin on his legs black. He'd
lain on the deck of a ketch, rolling from side to side as waves broke
across the ship, in constant pain from the salt water that soaked into his
burns, vomiting helplessly, unable to stand or even sit up. Then the
ketch had dragged her anchor and they'd been in imminent danger of
shipwreck, and for the whole of that time he'd moved freely, he hadn't
vomited, he'd felt no pain and no fear. He had simply performed


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coolly and calmly the actions needed to avert danger, as they all had.
After they'd landed, his legs had hurt like hell and he'd once more been
unable to walk. He'd been carried up from the beach on a litter, and
had spent the first few days seeing patients from his sick bed, shuffling
from the patient to the dispensing cupboard and back again on his
bottom. He smiled to himself, thinking Prior would like that story.
Physician, heal thyself.

Other people had had similar experiences. Men had escaped from
danger before now by running on broken legs. But Prior had created a
state whose freedom from fear and pain was persistent, encapsulated,
inaccessible to normal consciousness. Almost as if his mind had created
a warrior double, a creature formed out of Flanders clay, as his dream
had suggested. And he had brought it home with him.

Rivers, thinking over the previous evening, found that he retained
one very powerful impression. In Prior's speech and behaviour there
had been a persistent element of childishness. He'd said, He was wounded.
Not badly, but it hurt. He knew he had to go on. And he couldn't. So I came. So 
I came. The simplicity of it. As if one were talking to a child who
still believed in magic. And on the stairs. What happened then? Nothing.
He wasn't there. It was like a toddler who believes himself to be invisible
because he's closed his eyes. And that extraordinary claim: / have no
father. Surely behind the adult voice, there was another, shrill, defiant,
saying, He's not my Dad'? At any rate it was a starting-point. He could
think of no other.


Rivers had not thought Prior would appear for breakfast, but no
sooner had he sat down himself than the door opened and Prior came
in, looking dejected, and in obvious pain. 'How did you sleep?' Rivers
asked.

'All right. Well, I got a couple of hours.'

'I've asked the girl to bring us some more.'

'It doesn't matter, I'm not hungry.'

'Well, at least have some coffee. You ought to have something.'

'Yes, thanks, but then I must be going.'

'I'd rather you stayed. For a few days. Until things are easier.'

'I wouldn't dream of imposing on you.'

'You wouldn't be "imposing".'

'All right,' Prior said at last. 'Thank you.'

The maid arrived with a second tray. Rivers was amused to see
Prior devour the food with single-minded concentration, while he


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sipped milky coffee and read The Times. 'I've got an hour before I
need go to the hospital,' he said, when Prior had finished. 'Do you feel
well enough?'

When they were settled in chairs beside the desk, Rivers said, 'I'd
like to go back quite a long way.'

Prior nodded. He looked too exhausted to be doing this.

'Do you remember the house you lived in when you were five?'

A faint smile. 'Yes.'

'Do you remember the top of the stairs?'

'Yes. It's no great feat, Rivers, Most people can.'

Rivers smiled. 'I walked into that one, didn't I? Do you remember
what was there?'

'Bedrooms.'

'No, I mean on the landing.'

'Nothing, there wasn't . . . No, the barometer. That's right. The
needle always pointed to stormy. I didn't think that was funny at the
time.'

'Do you remember anything else about it?'

'No.'

'What did you do when your father came in drunk?'

'Put my head under the bedclothes.'

'Nothing else?'

'I went down once. He threw me against the wall.'

'Were you badly hurt?'

'Bruised. He was devastated. He cried.'

'And you never went down again?'

'No. I used to sit on the landing, going PIG PIG PIG PIG.' He made
as if to pound his fist against the other palm, then remembered the
burn.

'Where were you exactly? Leaning over the banisters?'

'No, I used to sit on the top step. If they started shouting I'd shuffle a
bit further down.'

'And where was the barometer in relation to you?'

'On my left. I hope this is leading somewhere, Rivers.'

'I think it is.'

'It was a bit like a teddy-bear, I suppose. I mean it was a sort of
companion.'

'Can you imagine yourself back there?'

'I've said I --'

'No, take your time.'

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'All right.' Prior closed his eyes, then opened them again, looking
puzzled.

'Yes?'

'Nothing. It used to catch the light. There was a street lamp . . .' He
gestured vaguely over his shoulder. 'This is going to sound absolutely
mad. I used to go into the shine on the glass.'

A long silence.

'When it got too bad. And I didn't want to be there.'

'Then what happened? Did you go back to bed?'

'I must've done, mustn't I? Look, if you're saying this dates back to
then, you're wrong. The gaps started in France, they got better at
Craiglockhart, they started again a few months ago. It's nothing to do
with bloody barometers.'

Silence.

'Say something, Rivers.'

'I think it has. I think when you were quite small you discovered a
way of dealing with a very unpleasant situation. I think you found out
how to put yourself into a kind of trance. A dissociated state. And then
in France, under that intolerable pressure, you rediscovered it.'

Prior shook his head. 'You're saying it isn't something that happens.
It's something I do.'

'Not deliberately.' He waited. 'Look, you know the sort of thing
that happens. People lose their tempers, they burst into tears, they have
nightmares. They behave like children, in many respects. All I'm suggesting
is that you rediscovered a method of coping that served you
well as a child. But which is --'

'I went into the shine on the glass.'

Rivers looked puzzled. 'Yes, you said.'

'No, in the pub, the first time it happened. The first time in England.
I was watching the sunlight on a glass of beer.' He thought for a
moment. 'And I was very angry because Jimmy was dead, and . . .
everybody was enjoying themselves. I started to imagine what it would
be like if a tank came in and crushed them. And I suppose I got
frightened. It was so vivid, you see. Almost as if it had happened.' A
long pause. 'You say it's self-hypnosis.'

'I think it must be. Something like that.'

'So if I could do it and tell myself to remember in theory that would
fill in the gaps. All the gaps, because I'd bring all the memories back
with me.'

'I don't know if that's the right thing to do.'


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'But in theory it would work.'

'If you could become sufficiently aware of the process, yes.'

Prior was lost in thought. 'Is it just remembering?'

'I don't think I know what you mean.'

'If I remember is that enough to heal the split?'

'No, I don't think so. I think there has to be a moment of ...
recognition. Acceptance. There has to be a moment when you look in
the mirror and say, yes, this too is myself

'That could be difficult.'

'Why should it be?'

Prior's lips twisted. 'I find some parts of me pretty bloody unacceptable
even at the best of times.'

The sadism again. 'There was nothing I saw or heard last night that
would lead me to believe anything . . . terrible might be happening.'

'Perhaps you're just not his type.'
' "Mister Prior.'"

A reluctant smile. 'All right.'

Rivers stood up. 'I think we've got as far as we can for the moment. Don't 
spend the day brooding, will you? And don't get depressed.
We've made a lot of progress. It'll do you much more good to have a
break. Here, you'll need this.' Rivers went to his desk, opened the top
drawer, and took out a key. Till tell the servants to expect you.'


TWENTY


Prior woke with a cry and lay in the darkness, sweating, disorientated,
unable to understand why the grey square of window was on his right,
instead of opposite his bed as it should have been. He'd been with
Rivers for over a fortnight and yet he still had these moments when he
woke and couldn't remember where he was. Footsteps came padding
to his door.

'Are you all right?' Rivers's voice.

'Come in.' Prior put the lamp on. 'I'm sorry I woke you.'

'You cried out. I couldn't think what it was.'

'Yes, I know, I'm sorry.'

They looked at each other. Prior smiled. 'Shades of Craiglockhart.'


402


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Yes,' Rivers said. 'We've done this often enough.'

'You were on duty then. Go on, get back to bed. You need the rest.'

'Will you be able to get back to sleep?'

'Oh, yes, I'll be all right.' He looked at Rivers's exhausted face.
'And you certainly should. Go on, go back to bed.'

The dream had been about Mac, Prior thought, as the door closed
behind Rivers. He couldn't remember it clearly, only that it had been
full of struggling animals and the smell of blood. Rivers seemed to
think it was a good sign that his nightmares had moved away from the
war, back into his childhood, but they were no less horrifying, and in
any case they were still about the war, he knew they were. Rivers
made him talk endlessly about his childhood, particularly his early
childhood, the rows between his parents, his own fear, the evenings
he'd spent at the top of the stairs, listening, words and blows burnt into
him till he could bear it no longer, and decided not to be there. He
could still not remember what happened in the childhood gaps, though
now he remembered that there had been gaps, though only when he
was quite small. Once, in sheer exasperation, he'd asked Rivers how he
was getting on with his own gap, the darkness at the top of his own
stairs, but Rivers had simply smiled and pressed on. One always
thought of Rivers as a gentle man, but Prior sometimes wondered why
one did. Relentless might have been a better word.

The nightmares, though, were not about the rows between his
parents. The nightmares were about Mac. And that was strange because
most of his memories of Mac were pleasant.

An expanse of gritty asphalt. A low building with wire cages over
the windows. Smells of custard and sweaty socks. The singing lesson,
Monday morning, straight after Assembly, with Horton prowling up
and down the aisles, swishing his cane against his trouser leg, listening
for wrong notes. His taste had run to sentimental ballads, 'The Lost
Chord' a firm favourite. This was the time Mr Hailes was inculcating a
terror of masturbation, with his lectures on Inflamed Organs and the
exhaustion which followed from playing with them. Horton sat down
at the piano and sang in his manly baritone:


I was seated one day at the organ
Weary and ill at ease.


Prior gave an incredulous yelp of laughter, one or two of the others
sniggered, Mac guffawed. The piano faltered into silence. Horton stood


403


THE EYE IN7 THE D O O R


up, summoned Mac to the front of the room and invited him to share
the joke. 'Well?' said Horton. 'I'm sure we could all do with being amused.'

'I don't think you'd think it was funny, sir.'

Mac was savagely caned. Prior was let off. Horton had heard Prior
laugh too, he was sure of it, but Prior, thanks to his mother's scrimping
and saving, was always well turned out. Shirts ironed, shoes polished,
he looked like the sort of boy who might get a scholarship, as indeed
he did, thanks partly to Father Mackenzie's more robust approach to
organ playing. Bastard, Prior thought, as Horton's arm swung.

Years later, after witnessing the brutalities of trench warfare, he still
thought: Bastard.

At the time he had been determined on revenge. Angrier on Mac's
behalf than he would ever have been on his own.

Horton was a man of regular habits. Precisely twenty minutes before
the bell rang for the end of the dinner break, he could be seen trekking
across the playground to the masters' lavatory. Not for him the newspaper
the boys had to make do with. Bulging from one side of his
jacket, like a single tit, was a roll of toilet-paper. He marched across
the yard with precise military tread, almost unnoticed by the shouting
and running boys. Humour in the playground was decidedly scatological,
but Horton's clockwork shitting was too old a joke to laugh at.

One dinnertime, posting Mac where he could see the main entrance
to the school, Prior went in on a recce. Next day he and Mac slipped
into the lavatory and locked the door of one of the cubicles. Prior lit a
match, applied it to the wick of a candle, shielded the flame with both
hands until it burned brightly, and fixed it in its own wax to a square
of plywood.

Prompt to the minute, Mr Horton entered. He was puzzled by the
locked cubicle. 'Mr Barnes?'

Prior produced a baritone grunt of immense effort and Horton said
no more. Not even that constipated grunt tempted them to giggle.
Horton's beatings were no laughing matter. They waited in silence,
feeling the rise and fall of each other's breath. Then, slowly, Prior
lowered the candle into the water that ran beneath the lavatory seat. It
was one long seat, really, though the cubicles divided it. The candle
flickered briefly, but then the flame rose up again and burnt steadily.
Prior urged it along the dark water, and it bobbed along, going much
faster than he'd thought it would. Mac was already unbolting the
door. They ran across the playground, to where a game of High


404


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Cockalorum was in progress (by arrangement) and hurled themselves
on top of the heap of struggling boys.

Behind them, candle flame met arse. A howl of pain and incredulity,
and Horton appeared, gazing wildly round him. No use him looking
for signs of guilt. He inspired such terror that guilt was written plain
on every one of the two hundred faces that turned towards him. In
any case there was dignity to be considered. He limped across the
playground and no more was heard.

Once he was safely out of sight, Prior and Mac went quietly round
the corner to the forbidden area by the pile of coke and there they
danced a solemn and entirely silent dance of triumph.

And why am I bothering to recall such an incident in so much detail,
Prior asked himself. Because every memory of friendship I come up
with is a shield against Hettie's spit in my face, a way of saying of
course I couldn't have done it. What surprised him now was how innocent he'd 
felt when Beattie first mentioned Hettie's belief that he'd
betrayed Mac. 'I didn't do it,' he'd said automatically, with total assurance,
for all the world as if he could answer for every minute of his
waking life. Only on the train coming back to London had he forced
himself to accept that it was possible he'd betrayed Mac. Or at any rate
that it was impossible for him to deny it.

Since then he'd gained one fact from Rivers that filled him with
fear. He now knew that in the fugue state he'd denied that his father
was his father. If he was prepared to deny that - a simple biological fact
after all -- what chance did pre-war friendships have? Rivers had hesitated
visibly when telling him what his other state had said, and yet
Prior's reaction to it had been more complicated than simple rejection
or denial. To say that one had been born in a shell-hole is to say
something absurdly self-dramatizing. Even by my standards, Prior
thought wryly. Yet if you asked anybody who'd fought in France
whether he thought he was the same person he'd been before the war,
the person his family still remembered, the overwhelming majority -- no, not 
even that, all of them, all of them would say no. It was merely a
matter of degree. And one did feel at times very powerfully that the
only loyalties that actually mattered were loyalties forged there. Picard
clay was a powerful glue. Might it not, applied to pre-war friendships
with conscientious objectors, be an equally powerful solvent?

Not in this state, he reminded himself. In this state he'd risked court
martial for Beattie's sake, copying out documents that incriminated
Spragge. But then Beattie was a woman, and couldn't fight. His other


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»

self might be less tolerant of healthy strapping young men spending
the war years trying to disrupt the supply of ammunition on which
other lives depended.

But Mac, he thought. Mac.

He did eventually drift off to sleep, and woke three hours later, to
find the room full of sunshine. He peered sleepily at his watch, then
reached for his dressing-gown. Rivers, already shaved and fully dressed,
was sitting over the remains of breakfast. 'It seemed better to let you
sleep,' he said. 'I'm afraid the coffee's cold.'

'Did you get back to sleep?'

'Yes.'

Lying hound, thought Prior. He drank the cold coffee as he shaved
and dressed. Rivers was waiting by the desk. For a moment Prior felt
rebellious, but then he looked at Rivers and saw how tired he was and
thought, my God, if he can manage it, I can. He sat down, and the
familiar position, the light falling on to Rivers's face, made him aware
that he'd taken a decision. 'I'm going to see Mac,' he said.

Silence. 'I think the reason I'm not making any progress is that . . .
there's a there's th-there's oh, for Christ's sake.' He threw back his head.
'There's a barrier, and I think it's something to do with him.'

'Finding out one fact about your behaviour over the past few weeks
isn't going to change anything.'

'I think it might.'

Another long silence. Rivers shifted his position, 'Yes, I do see that.'

'And although I see the point, I mean, I see how important it is to
get to the root of it, I do need to be functioning now. Somehow going
over what happened with my parents just makes me feel like a sort of
lifelong hopeless neurotic. It makes me feel I'll never be able to do anything.'

'Oh, I shouldn't worry about that,' Rivers said. 'Half the world's
work's done by hopeless neurotics.'

This was accompanied by an involuntary glance at his desk. Prior
laughed aloud. 'Would you like me to help you with any of it?'

Rivers smiled. 'I was thinking of Darwin.'

'Like hell. Why don't you let me do that?' Prior asked, pointing to a
stack of papers on the desk. 'You're just typing it out, aren't you?
You're not altering it.'

'It's very kind of you, but you couldn't read the writing. That's why
I have to type it. My secretary can't read it either.'

'Let's have a look. Do you mind?' Prior picked up a sheet of paper.


406


HE EYE IN THE DOOR

I

THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'Rivers, do you realize this is the graphic equivalent of a stammer? I
mean, whatever it is you couldn't say, you certainly didn't intend to
write it. '

Rivers pointed his index finger. 'You're getting better.'

Prior smiled. Without apparent effort, he read a sentence aloud: Thus, a 
frequent factor in the production of war neurosis is the necessity of
restraint of the expression of dislike or disrespect for those of superior 
rank. 'There's no hope for me, then, is there? I wonder why you bother.' He
pushed Rivers gently off the chair. 'Go on, you get on with something
else.'

Rivers shook his head. 'Do you know, nobody's ever done that
before.'

'I'm good at breaking codes.'

'Is that a boast?'

'No. Pure terror.'


As Rivers turned the corner, he saw a man leaving Sassoon's room.
They met face to face in the narrow corridor, and stopped.

'Dr Rivers?'

'Yes.'

'Robert Ross.'

They shook hands. After a few pleasantries about the weather, Ross
said, 'I don't know whether Siegfried's talked about the future at all?'

'I believe he has various plans. Obviously he's in no state to do
anything very much at the moment.'

'Gosse has some idea he could be useful in war propaganda, you
know. Apparently Siegfried told him his only qualification for the job
was that he'd been wounded in the head.'

They laughed, united by their shared affection for Siegfried, then
said goodbye. Rivers was left with the impression that Ross had wanted
to tell him something, but had thought better of it.

Siegfried was sitting up in bed, a notepad on his knees. 'Was that
you talking to Ross?'

'Yes.'

'He looks ill, doesn't he?'

He looked worse than 'ill'. He looked as if he were dying. 'It's
difficult to tell when you don't know the person.'

'I shan't be seeing him next week. He's off to the country.'

Rivers sat down by the bed.

'I've been trying to write to Owen,' Sassoon said. 'You remember


407


THE EVE IN THE DOOR


Owen? Little chap. Used to be in the breakfast-room selling the Hydra.'

'Yes, I remember. Brock's patient.'

'Well, he sent me a poem and I praised it to to the skies and now it's
been passed round . . .' Siegfried pulled a face. 'Nobody else likes it.
And now I look at it again I'm not sure either. The fact is ..." he said,
putting the pad on his bedside table, 'my judgement's gone. And not
just for Owen's work. I thought I'd done one or two good things, but
when I look at them again they're rubbish. In fact, I don't think I've
done anything good since I left Craiglockhart.'

Rivers said carefully, 'You think that at the moment because you're
depressed. Give yourself a rest.'

'Am I depressed?'

'You know you are.'

'I don't know what point there is in it anyway. What's an antiwar
poet except a poet who's dependent on war? I thought a lot of
things were simple, Rivers, and . . .' A pause. 'Eddie Marsh came to
see me. He thinks he can find me a job at the Ministry of
Munitions.'

'What do you think about that?'

'I don't know.'

Rivers nodded. 'Well, you've got plenty of time.'

'I don't even know whether I'm going back to France. Am I?'

'I shall do everything I can to prevent it. I don't think anybody
expects you to go back this time.'

'I never regretted going back, you know. Not once.' He sat up
suddenly, clasping his arms round his knees. 'You know what I'd really
like to do? Go to Sheffield and work in a factory.'

'In a factory?'

'Yes, why not? I don't want to spend the rest of my life wrapped up
in the sort of cocoon I was in before the war. I want to find out about
ordinary people. Workers.'

'Why Sheffield?'

'Because it's close to Edward Carpenter.'

Silence.

'Why not?' Siegfried demanded. 'Why not? I did everything anybody
wanted me to do. Everything you wanted me to do. I gave in,
I went back. Now why can't I do something that's right for we?'

'Because you're still in the army.'

'But you say yourself nobody expects --'


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'That's a very ditterent matter trorn a General Discharge. 1 see no
grounds for that.'

'Does it rest with you?'

'Yes.' Rivers got up and walked to the window. He had hoped this
time to be able to use his skills unambiguously for Siegfried's benefit.
Instead, he was faced with the task of putting obstacles in the way of
yet another hare-brained scheme, because this was another protest,
smaller, more private, less hopeful, than his public declaration had
been, but still a protest.

Behind him Siegfried said, 'There was a great jamboree in the park
yesterday. Bands playing.'

Rivers turned to look at him. 'Of course, I was forgetting. August
4th.'

'They were unveiling some sort of shrine to the dead. Or giving
thanks for the war, I'm not sure which. There's a Committee for War
Memorials. One of the committees Robbie had to resign from. Can't
have the Glorious Dead commemorated by a sodomite. Even if some
of the Glorious Dead were sodomites.'

'You're very bitter.'

'And you're right, it's no good. You can ride anger.' Siegfried raised
his hands in a horseman's gesture, forefingers splayed to take the reins.
'I don't know what you do with bitterness. Nothing, probably.'

Rivers caught and held a sigh. 'There's something I want to say. In
my own defence, I suppose. If at any time you'd said to me, "I am a
pacifist. I believe it's always and in all circumstances wrong to kill", I
... I wouldn't have agreed with you, I'd've made you argue the case
every step of the way, but in the end I'd've done everything in my
power to help you get out of the army.'

'You don't need a defence. I told you, I never regretted going back.'

'But then you have to face the fact that you're still a soldier.' Rivers
opened his mouth, looked down at Siegfried, and shut it again. 'You
know, you really oughtn't to be lying in bed on a day like this. Why
don't you get dressed? We could go out.'

Siegfried looked at his tunic, hanging on the back of the door. 'No,
thanks, I'd rather not.'

'You haven't been dressed since you arrived.'

'I can't be bothered to dazzle the VADs.'

'Dazzle? Isn't that a bit conceited?'

'Fact, Rivers.' Siegfried smiled. 'One of life's minor ironies.'

Rivers walked across the room, took Siegfried's tunic from the peg


409


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and threw it on to the bed. 'Come on, Siegfried. Put it on. You can't

spend the rest of your life in pyjamas.'

'I can't spend the rest of my life in that either.'

'No, but you have to spend the rest of the war in it.'

For a moment it looked as if Siegfried would refuse. Then, slowly,

he pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He looked terrible.

White. Twitching. Exhausted.
'We needn't go far,' Rivers said.
Slowly, Sassoon started to put on the uniform.


It was easier for Prior to arrange a visit to Mac than he had expected.
He still had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper, having taken a
pile with him when he cleared his desk. But probably even without it,
the uniform, the wound stripe, the earnestly expressed wish to save an
old friend from the shame of pacifism, would have been enough to get
him an interview.

Mac was sitting on his plank bed, his head in his hands.

Prior said, 'Hello, Mac.'

The hands came down. Mac looked ... as people do look who've
had repeated disagreements with detention camp guards.

'On your feet,' the guard said.

'No,' Prior said sharply. 'Leave us.'

The man looked startled, but obeyed. It was a relief when the door
clanged shut behind him. Prior had been dreading a situation where
Mac refused to salute him, and the guards spent the next half hour
bouncing his head off the wall.

'Well,' Prior said.

No chair. No glass in the window. A smell of stale urine from the
bucket, placed where it could be seen from the door. And behind him
. . . yes, of course. The eye.

'I didn't expect to see you,' Mac said. Neither his voice nor his
manner was friendly, but he showed no obvious rancour. Perhaps, like
a soldier, he'd become accustomed to the giving and receiving of hard,
impersonal knocks. There was no room for emotion in this.

'At least they've given you a blanket.'

Mac was naked underneath the blanket and the cell was cold even in
summer.

'For your visit. It goes when you go.'

Prior sat down at the foot of the plank bed and looked around him.

'One of the main weapons, that,' said Mac conversationally. 'March410



THE EYE IN THE DOOR


mg you about the place naked. Especially since they don't give you
any paper to wipe yourself with and the food in here's enough to give
a brass monkey the shits.' He waited. 'The arsehole plays a major part
in breaking people down, did you know that?'

'You look as if they've worked you over.'

'Work? Pleasure. One of them . . .' Mac raised his forearm. 'Hang
your towel on it.'

'Is that over now?'

'The beatings? They're over when I give in.'

A uniform was lying, neatly folded, on the end of the bed.

'Can I ask you something, Billy? Do you talk about the war in the
trenches? I don't mean day-to-day stuff, pass the ammunition, all that,
I mean, "Why are we fighting?" "What is it all for?" '

'No. We're 'ere because we're 'ere.'

'Same in here.'

Prior looked puzzled. 'There's nobody to talk to.'

Mac smiled. 'Morse code on the pipes. I take it I can rely on you not
to tell the CO?'

'Of course.'

'"Ofcourse", Billy?'

'It wasn't me.'

Mac smiled and shook his head. 'Why come here if you're going to
say that? Why come at all? I don't know. Do you just want to see
what you've done?'

Prior opened his mouth for a second denial, and closed it again. 'I've
got something for you," he said, digging into his tunic pocket and
bringing out two bars of chocolate. He watched Mac's pupils flare,
then go dead. 'Yes, I know. It's contaminated. I've touched it.' He held
the chocolate out, using his body to screen Mac from the eye. 'But you
have to survive.'

Mac aligned himself exactly with Prior so that he could take the
chocolate without being seen. 'That's true.'

'You'd better eat it. They'll search you.'

'They won't. That would mean doubting your integrity. An officer
and a gentleman, no less. All the same I think I will have some.' He slit
the paper with his fingernail, broke off a piece and started to eat. The
movements of his mouth and throat were awkward. Hunger had
turned eating into an act as private as bishop-bashing. Prior tried to
look away, but there was nothing to look at. His eyes could only
wander round the cell and return to Mac.


411


THE EYE IN THE DOOR    '"


*!

'Nine steps that way. Seven this. I do a lot of walking.'

'How long are you in for?'

'Solitary? Ninety days. If I reoffend -- which is my intention -- back
in. Another ninety.'

Prior looked down at his hands. 'And no letters?'

'No.'

Mac managed a smile between mouthfuls. 'Why did you come,
Billy?'

'To find out what you thought.'

'About you? What a self-centred little shit you are.'

'Yes.'

'I didn't believe it. The sergeant in Liverpool told me it was you, I
mean, he mentioned your name. He was standing on my scrotum at
the time, so, as you can imagine, it had a certain ring to it. I still didn't
believe it, but the more I thought about it the more I thought, yes.'
Mac was speaking intently, and yet almost indifferently, as if he didn't
care whether Prior listened or not. Perhaps speaking at all was merely a
way of salving his pride, of distracting Prior's attention while the all
important business of devouring the chocolate went on. 'And then I
thought, he told you. Do you remember in the cattle shed I asked you
what you'd have done if you'd found a deserter in Hettie's scullery and
you said, "I'd turn him in. What else could I do?" And then I remembered
a story I heard, about a man who found a snake half dead and
nursed it back to life. He fed it, took care of it. And then he let it go.
And the next time they met it bit him. And this was a very poisonous
snake, he ... knew he was going to die. And with his last gasp, he said,
"But why? I saved you, I fed you, I nursed you. Why did you bite
me?" And the snake said, "But you knew I was a snake."'

A long silence. Prior moved at last. 'It's a good story.'

'It's a fucking marvellous story. Only . . .'

Prior waited. 'Only what?'

'Now shall I be greedy, and eat it all?'

'Make sure of it. I would.'

'I probably hate you a lot less than you think. Not that I'd say we
were bosom pals exactly, in fact if I meet you after the war I'll probably
try to kill you . . .' He smiled and shook his head. 'Was it all a lie about
wanting to help Beattie?'

'No, it was all true.'

'You know what I'd like? I'd like you to look me straight in the eye,
put on that phoney public school accent of yours, and say, yes I told


412


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the police where to find you, and I'm not ashamed of that. It was my
duty.'

'I can't.'

Mac was watching him intently. 'Then I don't understand. I thought
you'd finally worked out whose side you were on.'

'There was never any doubt about that,' Prior said, raising his sleeve.
'People who wear this. More or less with pride.' He stood up. 'I shan't
say I'm sorry.'

Mac looked up at him. 'Don't. Chocolate's too precious to bring
back.'

Prior knocked, and waited impatiently for the guard to appear. He
realized the painted eye must be looking straight at his belt buckle.
Surreptitiously, he put his finger into the hole until it touched cool
glass. Towers's eye, he remembered, lying in the palm of his hand, had
been warm.

The guard appeared and, with one backward glance, he followed
him along the iron landing and down the stairs. He had the rest of the
day to get through before he could talk to Rivers, but he was glad of
that. It was right that the first confusion and pain should be borne
alone. He did not doubt for a moment that Mac's story was true -- Mac
had no reason to lie. Though he still had no memory of doing it, he
had betrayed Mac.

He remembered an occasion when he'd held out a shaking hand to
Rivers, stuttering something totally incoherent about Towers's eye,
how the memory of holding it in his hand had become a talisman, a
reminder of where the deepest loyalties lie. That was still true. And yet
he could not justify what he had done to Mac. Even if his other self
hated Mac for refusing to fight, for trying to bring the munitions
factories to a halt, it remained true that in arranging to meet Mac he
had in effect offered him a safe conduct - for Beattie's sake. Even
leaving aside the childhood friendship, there had been a personal undertaking
given in the present, trusted in the present, betrayed in the
present. He could not, whether to satisfy Mac or console himself, say,
'I did my duty.' What had happened was altogether darker, more
complex than that.

Drill was going on in the yard outside. Familiar shouts, the slurrying
and stamping of boots, lines of regimented bodies moving as one. In
the front rank a conchie was being 'persuaded' to take part. That is, he
was being manhandled first into one position, then another. 'Marking
time' consisted of being kicked on the ankles by the guards on either


4i3


THE EYE F N THE DOOR


side. No attempt was made to hide what was happening. Presumably it
was taken for granted that an officer would approve.
Prior watched for a while, then turned away.


TWENTY-ONE


A freshening breeze, blowing across the Serpentine, fumbled the roses,
loosening red and yellow petals that lay on the dry soil or drifted across
the paths. Rivers and Sassoon had been wandering along beside the
lake for no more than fifteen minutes, but already Sassoon looked
tired.

'I've been very good,' he said. 'The last few days. Out of bed and
dressed before breakfast.'

'Good.'

Glutinous yellow sunlight, slanting between the trees, cast their
shadows across the water.

'Do you remember me telling you about Richard Dadd?' Siegfried
asked suddenly. 'Drowning his father in the Serpentine?'

'Yes,' Rivers said, and waited for more. When Siegfried didn't
speak, he asked, 'Should I be hanging on to a tree?'

Siegfried smiled. 'No, not you.'

The deck-chairs beside the lake were empty, bellying in the wind,
but on a sunny sheltered bank soldiers home on leave sat or lay entwined
with their girls, the girls' summer dresses bright splashes against
the khaki of their uniforms. A woman in a black uniform appeared on
the ridge and began to make her way diagonally down the slope. As
she advanced, a black beetle toiling across the grass, the lovers drew
apart, and a girl close to the path tugged anxiously at the hem of her
skirt.

'I've even been to the common room,' Siegfried said. 'You know
what the topic of conversation was? The changes you notice when
you're home on leave and whether any of them are for the better. And
somebody said, yes, every time you came home women's skirts were
shorter. I'm afraid it's not much consolation to me.'

Rivers caught a sigh. Depression and bitterness had become Siegfried's
settled state. If he seemed better than he had when he first


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arrived, it was mainly because depression -- provided it hasn't reached
the point of stupor -- is more easily disguised than elation. He was
actually very ill indeed.

'I must say I'll be glad to be out of London,' Siegfried went on.
'Have you heard any more about this convalescent home?'

'Oh, yes. They can take you.'

'It's. . . I'm sorry, I've forgotten where you said it was.'

'Coldstream. Near Berwickon-Tweed.'

'Is that anywhere near Scarborough? It's just Owen's stationed in
Scarborough.'

'Well, it's not near, but you could probably get there and back in a
day.' Rivers hesitated. 'There is one thing I think you . . . might not
like. There has to be a Medical Board first.'

'Yes.'

Siegfried sounded puzzled. This wasn't the first time he'd been in
hospital: riding accident .during training, trench fever, wounded,
'shell-shocked' at Craiglockhart, wounded again. He knew the routine
backwards.

'At Craiglockhart,' Rivers said.

A stunned silence. 'No. Why Craiglockhart?'

'Because you're my patient. Because I want to be on the Board.'

Siegfried couldn't take it in. 'I can't go back there.'

'I'm afraid you've got to. It's only for a few days, Siegfried.'

Siegfried shook his head. 'I can't. You don't know what you're
asking.'

There was an empty bench a few yards further on. Rivers sat down
and indicated that Siegfried should join him. 'Tell me, then.'

A silence during which Sassoon struggled visibly with himself.

'Why can't you?' Rivers prompted gently.

'Because it would mean admitting I'm one of them.'

Rivers felt a flare of anger, but brought it quickly under control.
'One of whom?'

Siegfried was silent. At last he said, 'You know what I mean.'

'Yes, I'm afraid I do. One of the degenerates, the loonies, the lead
swingers, the cowards.' He waited for a response, but Siegfried had
turned his head away. 'You know, Siegfried, sometimes I ... reproach
myself with having exercised too great an influence on you. At a time
when you were vulnerable and . . . perhaps needed to be left alone to
come to your own decision in your way.' Rivers shook his head.
'Well, I shan't be doing that again. If you still think like that I haven't


415


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


influenced you at all. I haven't managed to convey a single bloody
thing. Not a bloody thing.' He looked out over the lake. The wind
blew a dark ripple across the surface like goose pimples spreading
across skin. 'Perhaps we'd better be getting back.'

'Not yet.'

'You have to go back to Craiglockhart. I'm sorry, I'll make it as
short as I can, but you have to go.'

Siegfried nodded. He was sitting with his big hands clasped between
his knees. 'All right. But you do see what I'm trying to say? I know you
find it offensive, but . . . It's not just admitting I'm one of them now, it's 
admitting I always was. Don't you see?'

'Yes, and it's nonsense. One day I'm going to give you a copy of
your admission report. "No physical or mental signs of any nervous
disorder." If you're tormenting yourself with the idea that your protest
was some kind of symptom, well, for God's sake, stop. It wasn't. It was
an entirely valid, sane response to the situation we're all in.' He paused. 
'Wrong, of course.'

'When I was in France I used to think of it as breakdown. It was
easier than '

'Than remembering what you believed?'

'Yes.' Siegfried looked down at his hands. 'Now I just feel as if a
trap's been sprung.' A slight laugh. 'Not by you, I don't mean by you.
But it has, hasn't it? It's absolutely fall circle. Literally back to the
beginning. Only worse, because now I belong there.'

'Three days. I promise.'

Siegfried got up. 'All right.'

Rivers remained seated for a moment. He wanted to say, if there is a
trap, I'm in it too, but he couldn't. 'Come on,' he said, standing up.
'Let's go back.'


The bomb site had been tidied up, Prior saw. Rubble cleared away,
the pavements swept clean of white dust, the houses on either side of
the gap shored up. A cold wind whistled through the gap, disturbing
the trees, whipping up litter into whirlpools that ran along the gutters.
The sun blazed in the windows of the houses opposite the gap, turning
the far side of the square into a wall of fire.

Prior was early for his appointment and dawdled along, noticing
what on his previous visit, walking with Charles Manning through the
spring dark, he had not noticed: that many of the elegant houses had
dingy basements, like white teeth yellow round the gums.


416


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


He pressed the bell of Manning's house and turned slightly away,
expecting to have to wait, but the door was opened almost immediately
and by Manning himself, so quickly indeed that he must have been
hovering in the hall. He might have appeared anxious, but his smile,
his whole bearing, gave the impression of impulsive informality.

'It's all right, I've got it,' he said to somebody over his shoulder, and
stood aside to let Prior in. Tm glad you could come. I thought of
waiting till we were both back at work, but --'

'I'm not going back,' Prior said quickly.

'Ah.'

The living-room door stood open. No dust-sheets now.

'Oh, yes, come and see,' Manning said, noticing the direction of his
glance.

They went in. A smell of furniture polish and roses.

'You found a builder, then,' Prior said, looking up at the door.

'Yes. I must say he didn't inspire a lot of confidence, but he seems to
have done all right. As far as one can tell.' Manning patted the wall.
'I've got a sneaking suspicion the wallpaper might be holding the
plaster up.'

They found themselves staring rather too long at the place where
the crack had been, and glanced at each other, momentarily at a loss.
'Come and sit down,' Manning said.

A bowl of red and yellow roses stood in the fireplace where before
there had been scrumpled newspaper dusted with soot. No mirror
either - that had been moved. The whole room had been redecorated.
So much was changed that the unyielding brocade of the sofa came as
a shock. Prior flexed his shoulders, remembering. It was almost as if
the body had an alternative store of memory in the nerve endings,
for the sensation of being held stiffly erect induced a state of sensual
awareness. He looked at Manning, and knew that he too was
remembering.

'Would you like a drink?'

Manning went across to the sideboard. Prior, noticing a book lying
face down on the floor near an armchair, reached across and picked it
up. Rex v. Pemberton Billing. It was a complete transcript of the trial.
What an extraordinary thing for Manning to be reading. Manning
came back with the drinks. 'Is it good?' Prior asked, holding up the
book.

'Fascinating,' Manning said. 'I realized while I was reading it
wh-wh-what's actually h-happening. It's just that people are saturated


41?


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


with tragedy, they simply can't respond any more. So they've decided
to play the rest of the war as farce.'

'I can't say I'd be prepared to fork out good money for this.'

'I didn't,' Manning said, sitting down. 'It was sent to me. By "a
well-wisher".'

Prior raised his eyebrows. 'Really?'

'Oh, yes. I've had several little . . . communications.'

'Captain Spencer came to see us, you know.'

'"Us"?'

'The Intelligence Unit. I think somebody must have told him the
first question he'd be asked in court was whether he'd informed the
appropriate authorities when he discovered the Great Conspiracy. So
he was scurrying round London informing them.' Prior laughed.

'Did he mention any names?'

'Good Lord, yes.' Prior looked up and caught a fleeting expression
of anxiety. 'Not you.'

'No, I didn't think that, I'm not important enough. Robert Ross?'

'Well, yes.'

Manning nodded. 'You say you're not going back?'

'There's nothing to go back to. I went in to check my pigeonhole
and ... it was like the Marie Celeste. Files gone. Lode gone.'

'He's. . .'

'Teaching cadets. In Wales. No doubt that pleases him.'

'Why, is he Welsh?'

'I was being sarcastic. I shouldn't think it pleases him in the least.
Spragge. I don't know whether you --'

'The informer?'

'That's right. He's gone -- or going, I'm not sure which -- to South
Africa. All expenses paid.'

Manning hesitated. 'I ... don't think you should feel nothing useful
came out of that. I showed Eddie Marsh your report and ... he was
rather impressed actually. As I was. He thought it was . . . very cogently
argued. Very effective.'

'It may have been cogently argued. It certainly wasn't effective. She's
still in prison.'

Manning smiled. 'The point is --'

The french windows were thrown open, and a chubby-cheeked
child peered, blinking, into the dark interior. 'Daddy?'

'Not now, Robert,' Manning said, turning round. 'Ask Elsie.'

Manning's face softened as he watched the child close the door


418


The H F. EYE IN The H F. D O O R


carefully behind him. His delight in his house and family was so
obvious it seemed churlish to wonder if he ever regretted the empty
rooms of early spring, the smells of soot and fallen plaster, the footsteps
that had followed him upstairs to the maids' bedroom.

'The point is that being able to organize an array of complicated
facts and present them succinctly is quite a rare ability. And just the
sort of thing we're looking for in my line of work.'

'Which is. . .'

'Health and safety. To cut a long story short, I'm offering you a
job.'

'Ah.'

'I think you might find it worth while. Since it's basically protecting
the interests of the workers.'

Prior was in no hurry to reply. He had resigned himself, not entirely
with reluctance, to going back to Scarborough, to resuming the boring,
comfortless life of an army camp in England. At the same time he
knew Manning's offer was one for which a great many men would
have given an arm or a leg, and not merely in the meaningless way
that expression was normally used. 'Is Rivers behind this?'

'No.'

Prior wasn't sure he believed him. 'I'm very grateful, Charles -- don't think I 
don't appreciate it - but I'm afraid I can't accept.'

'Why not?'

'Sarah -- that's my girlfriend -- she's in the north. I'd be able to see
quite a lot of her if I was in Scarborough. And -- that's a big factor.
And . . . I'm not sure how much I want a cushy job.'

Manning hesitated. 'It does have one very big advantage. It's most
unlikely you'd be sent back to France. Though I suppose that's not
very likely anyway.'

'Oh, I don't know.'

'What rating are you?'

'A4.'

'That's a long way from the top.'

'With a Board in two weeks' time.'

'Rivers wouldn't let it happen.'

'Rivers has nothing to do with it. I was given my original rating on
the basis of my asthma.'

'But he'd write to the Board if you asked him.'

'I know. In fact I think Rivers could be quite eloquent on the
subject of my unfitness for France. The point is, he won't be asked.'


419


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


'How arc you really?'

'A lot better.'

Manning toyed with his glass. 'What was the trouble exactly?'

Prior smiled, remained silent just long enough for Manning to feel
embarrassed by the intrusiveness of the question, then answered it.
'Memory lapses. Black-outs, I suppose. They do seem to be over.'

'Do you know what you did during them?'

'Yes.' Prior smiled again. 'Nothing I don't have a tendency to do.'     J j

Manning became aware that he was looking almost indecently curi j|

ous, and quickly corrected his expression.      s j

ib* I

'How about you?' Prior said.    t j

'Mending. It was much harder work than I thought it would be.'

'Rivers? Oh, yes.'

'I mean, he's an absolute slave-driver. And you can't grumble because
you know he's driving himself even harder.'

A glance of amusement and shared affection. Then Manning said,
'You sound almost as if you want to go back.'

'Yes, I suppose I do, in a way. It's odd, isn't it? In spite of everything
-- I mean in spite of Not Believing in the War and Not Having Faith in
Our Generals and all that, it still seems the only clean place to be.'

'Yes. My God, yes.'

They stared at each other, aware of a depth of understanding that
the surface facts of their relationship scarcely accounted for.

'Not an option for me, I'm afraid,' Manning added, stretching out
his leg. 'But I do know what you mean.'

'Do you think we're mad?'

'Both been in the loony bin.'

'You'd better not let Rivers hear you calling it that.'

'I wouldn't dare. The offer's open for the next few days, you know,'
Manning said, putting down his glass. 'I shan't be seeing Marsh till --'

Prior smiled and shook his head. 'No. Thank you, but no.'

'You don't think you might regret it?'

Prior laughed. 'Charles, if I get sent back -- if, if, if, if-- I shall sit in a
dug-out and look back to this afternoon, and I shall think, "You bloody fool.'"

'Well,' Manning said, standing up. 'I tried.'

In the hall a maid came forward carrying Prior's cap and cane. Prior
glanced at her: she was sallow-skinned, middle aged, about as old as his
mother, he supposed. He stared at her uniform, remembering how
he'd pressed his face into the armpits, smelling the careworn, sad smell.


420


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Manning was saying something, but he didn't hear what it was. He
turned to him and said, 'Now I come to think of it, Spencer did mention other 
names.'

Manning said smoothly, 'Thank you, Alice. I'll see Mr Prior out.'

'Winston Churchill and Edward Marsh.'

Manning gave an astonished yelp. 'Churchill?'

'Yes.'

'Then he is mad.'

'Yes, that's what I thought.' Prior walked to the door, then stopped.
'He said Churchill and Marsh spent an entire afternoon beating each
other's buttocks with a plaited birch.'

'Yes.'

'What do you mean "yes"?'

'Churchill was Home Secretary at the time.'

'Oh, well, that explains everything.'

'It was a new kind of birch.' Manning looked impatient. 'I don't
know the details, there'd been some sort of controversy about it. I
think people were saying it was cruel. So naturally they --'

Tried it out on each other.'

'Yes.' Manning's expression hardened. 'They were doing their
duty.'

'What conclusion did they reach?'

'I think they both thought they'd had worse beatings at school.'

Prior nodded, glanced round to make sure they were unobserved,
then took hold of Manning's pudgy cheeks and chucked them. 'There'll
always be an England,' he told him and ran, laughing, down the steps.


421


author's note


The reader may find it useful to have a brief outline of the historical
events that occurred in 1917--1918 on which this novel is based.

Beattie Roper's story is loosely based on the 'poison plot' of 1917.
Alice Wheeldon, a second-hand clothes dealer living in the back streets
of Derby, was accused and convicted of having conspired to murder
Lloyd George, Arthur Henderson and other persons by poisoning. The poison, in 
the case of Lloyd George, was to be administered by a
curare-tipped blowdart. The trial depositions are in the Public Record
Office, Chancery Lane, and provide a fascinating insight into the lives
of absolutist pacifists on the run, and the Ministry of Munitions agents
who spied on them. Mrs Wheeldon was convicted on the unsupported
evidence of such informers and sentenced to ten years' hard labour,
despite her insistence that the poison she had procured was intended for
the guard dogs at a detention centre. After the war she was released,
but, weakened by prison diet, hard labour and repeated hunger strikes,
died in 1919.

Friends of Alice Wheeldon by Sheila Rowbotham (Pluto Press, 1986)
contains a useful essay: 'Rebel Networks in the First World War'.

In January 1918 the Imperialist (later the Vigilante), a newspaper
owned and edited by the MP Noel Pemberton Billing, carried an
article entitled 'The First 47,000'. It purported to be written by Pemberton
Billing himself, but in fact the author was a Captain Harold Spencer,
who claimed that he had been a British Intelligence agent at the
time when he saw and read the Black Book in the cabinet noir of 'a
certain German Prince'.

In April this article was followed by a short paragraph entitled 'The
Cult of the Clitoris', again purporting to be written by Pemberton
Billing, and again written by Harold Spencer. This suggested that the
list of subscribers to a private performance of Oscar Wilde's Salome might 
contain many names of the 47,000. Maud Allan, who was to
dance the part of Salome, sued Pemberton Billing for libel, since the
paragraph clearly implied she was a lesbian.

The trial was presided over by Lord Justice Darling. Pemberton


422


THE EYE IN THE DOOR


Billing defended himself. Having been identified early in the proceedings
as one of the 47,000, Darling lost control of the court.

The star defence witness was Harold Spencer. In addition to giving
free rein to his obsession with women who had hypertrophied and
diseased clitorises and therefore could be satisfied only by bull elephants,
Spencer alleged that many members of the Asquith War Cabinet had
been in the pay of the Germans, that Maud Allan was Asquith's wife's
lover and a German agent, that many high-ranking officers in the
British army were Germans, and that persons who had the courage and
patriotism to point these facts out were marooned on desert islands
where they had to subsist on iron rations from submarines.

Lord Alfred Douglas, another defence witness, seized the opportunity
of pursuing his personal dispute with Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde's
devoted friend and literary executor, identifying him as 'the leader of
all the sodomites in London'.

After six days of chaos in the courtroom and hysteria in the newspapers,
Pemberton Billing won the case and was carried shoulder-high
through the cheering crowds that had gathered outside the Old Bailey.

Later that year Harold Spencer was certified insane.

Robert Ross died of heart failure, on 5 October, aged forty-nine.

Pemberton Billing went on to have a distinguished parliamentary
career.

In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), after protesting against the
war, had been persuaded by his friend Robert Graves to accept a
Medical Board, which decided that he was suffering from a mental
breakdown and that he should be sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital,
Edinburgh. There he came under the care of Dr W. H. R. Rivers, FRS
(1864--1922), the distinguished neurologist and social anthropologist.
At Craiglockhart, Sassoon reached the conclusion that, although his
views on the war had not changed, it was nevertheless his duty to
return to active service, where he could at least share the suffering of
his men.

After a period in Palestine he returned to France on 9 May 1918. On
13 July, returning late from a patrol, he was wounded in the scalp by a
rifle shot from one of his own NCOs; he was then sent back to
England, to the American Women's Red Cross Hospital at Lancaster
Gate. The fact that he was ill enough for Rivers to have found it
necessary to sit up with him is recalled in a letter from Katharine
Rivers to Ruth Head (unpublished letters of the Rivers family, Imperial War 
Museum).


423


Winston Churchill's and Edward Marsh's devotion to duty while at
the Home Office is mentioned in Edward Marsh, Patron of the Arts: A
Biography by Christopher Hassall (Longmans, 1959).


424




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