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. ‘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 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 anti-war 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 me?’
‘Because you’re still in the army.’
‘But you say yourself nobody expects –’
‘That’s a very different matter from a General Discharge. I 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 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. ‘Marching 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.’
‘“Of course”, 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.
‘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 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 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 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.