Authors: Pat Barker
'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.
'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.
'I'll be along again later.'
* * *
Later that afternoon, Major Telford—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.
'Get his legs.'
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.
'I'll 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
pietà.
'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
semi-conscious 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 Robert'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.
'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?'
'Half a bottle.
Bit more perhaps.'
No point talking to him, then.
'Where did you get it?'
'My mother.
Does it matter?'
'And the razor?'
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
bête 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.'
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 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.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Ada Lumb 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.