‘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. ‘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?’