‘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.
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.
‘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 Berwick-on-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 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
full 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.
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. ‘I’m 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 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 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.’