Authors: Pat Barker
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.' 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. He brushed it aside.
'I'll 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 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.
'No, I saw you
coming. 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 everytime'.
'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...'
'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.'