There was a great deal of light, it seemed to him, floods of silver-grey light filtered through white curtains that stirred in the breeze, and the insistent buzzing of an insect, trapped. He fastened his eyes on Rivers, who managed to smile at him without moving a muscle of his face.
Major Paget, the third, external member of the Board, was obviously startled by Burns’s appearance, but he asked a few questions for form’s sake. Rivers scarcely listened either to the questions or to the answers. The buzzing continued. He scanned the high windows, trying to locate the insect. The noise was unreasonably disturbing.
Paget said, ‘How often do you vomit now?’
Rivers got up and went across to the window. He found a bumble bee, between the curtain and the window, batting itself against the glass, fetched a file from the desk and, using it as a barrier, guided the insect into the open air. He watched it fly away. Directly below him, Anderson and Sassoon were setting off for their daily round of golf. Their voices drifted up to him. Rivers turned back into the room to find everybody, Burns included, staring at him in some surprise. He smiled faintly and went back to his seat.
‘This is getting to be a habit, isn’t it?’
Prior, hands twined round the iron bars of the bedhead, smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Not one I enjoy.’
He hadn’t regained the weight he’d lost during his last stay in sick bay. The ribs showed clearly through the stretched skin. ‘You were lucky to get back. When did it start?’
‘On the train. It was jam-packed. Everybody smoking.’
‘Lucky the young woman with you kept her head.’
‘Poor Sarah. I don’t think she’s ever had anybody pass out on her before.’
‘You realize you won’t have the sick bay to yourself this time?’ Rivers indicated the other bed. ‘Mr Willard.’
‘The legless wonder. Yes, we’ve met.’
‘Don’t you have any sympathy for anybody else?’
‘Are you suggesting I have any for myself?’ He watched Rivers fold the stethoscope. ‘You know what you were saying about the greater mental complexity of officers? How long do you think it’ll take you to convince that particular specimen of complexity that it hasn’t actually got a broken spine?’
‘How’s your voice, Mr Prior?’
Prior took a moment to register the direct hit. ‘Fine. Problem over, I think. I miss it. I used to enjoy my little Trappist times.’
‘Oh, I can believe that. I’ve often thought how nice it would be to retreat into total silence now and again.’
‘What do you mean “how nice it would be”? You do it all the time.’
‘I’ve arranged for a consultant to come and see you. A Dr Eaglesham. He’ll be in some time this week.’
‘Why?’
‘I need a measurement of your vital capacity.’
‘Demonstrations twice nightly.’
‘The other vital capacity. Try to get some rest now. Sister Duffy tells me you had a bad night.’
Rivers had got to the door before Prior called him back. ‘Why do you need it?’
‘This is the second time this has happened in six weeks. I don’t think we can let you go in front of a Medical Board without drawing their attention to your physical condition.’
‘If you’re thinking of wangling permanent home service, I don’t want it.’
‘I’m not thinking of “wangling” anything.’ Rivers looked down at Prior and his expression softened. ‘Look, if this is what happens when you’re exposed to cigarette smoke on a train, how would you cope with gas?’
‘Well, obviously, I’m affected at lower concentrations than anybody else. But then so what? I can be the battalion canary.’ A pause. ‘I’m not the only one with asthma.’
‘No, I’m sure you’re not. I’m told there are cases of active TB in the trenches. It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.’
‘I want to go back.’
A long silence.
‘You can’t talk to anybody here,’ Prior said. ‘Everybody’s either lost somebody, or knows somebody who has. They don’t want the truth. It’s like letters of condolence. “Dear Mrs Bloggs, Your son had the side of his head blown off by a shell and took five hours to die. We did manage to give him a decent Christian burial. Unfortunately that particular stretch of ground came under heavy bombardment the day after, so George has been back to see us five or six times since then.” They don’t want that. They want to be told that George – or Johnny – or whatever his name was, died a quick death and was given a decent send off.’ He said deliberately, ‘Yesterday, at the seaside, I felt as if I came from another planet.’
‘You can talk to people here.’
‘It’s the last thing this lot want to talk about. The point is, I’m better.’
‘That’s for the Board to decide.’
‘You mean, you.’
‘No-o. The Board. How are the nights? I mean apart from the asthma?I know last night was bad.’
‘I just refuse to play this game. I haven’t enough breath to answer questions you already know the answers to.’
‘What’s your subjective estimate of your nights?’
‘Better.’
‘Good. That was Sister Duffy’s impression too.’
‘Oh well, then…’ Prior glowered. ‘There’s another reason I want to go back. Rather a nasty, selfish little reason, but since you clearly think I’m a nasty selfish little person that won’t come as a surprise. When all this is over, people who didn’t go to France, or didn’t do well in France – people of my generation, I mean – aren’t going to count for anything. This is the Club to end all Clubs.’
‘And you want to belong.’
‘Yes.’
‘You already do.’
‘I broke down.’
‘And that’s why you want to go back? You’re ambitious, aren’t you?’
Prior didn’t answer.
‘No reason why you shouldn’t be. What do you want to do?’
‘Politics.’ He started back-tracking immediately. ‘Of course, it’s probably useless. You can’t get anywhere in this shitting country without an Oxford or Cambridge degree.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Easily said.’
‘Not easily said at all. I didn’t go to either.’
Prior looked surprised.
‘I got typhoid in my last year at school. We couldn’t afford Cambridge without the scholarship. No, you can certainly get on without. And things’ll be freer after the war. If only because hundreds of thousands of young men have been thrown into contact with the working classes in a way they’ve never been before. That has to have some impact.’
‘Careful, Rivers. You’re beginning to sound like a Bolshevik.’
‘I’m just trying to give you some faith in your own abilities. And by the way, I do not think you are a nasty selfish little person.’
Prior scowled ferociously, probably to hide his pleasure.
‘I’ll try to be here when Dr Eaglesham comes. Meanwhile, do you think you could try to get on with Willard?’
Rivers had just started shaving when the VAD banged on his door. She gasped something about ‘Captain Anderson’ and ‘blood’, and, dreading what he would find, Rivers hurried downstairs to Anderson’s room. He found Anderson huddled in a foetal position, in the corner by the window, teeth chattering, a dark stain spreading across the front of his pyjamas. His room-mate, Featherstone, stood by the washstand, razor in hand, looking at him with more irritation than sympathy.
‘What happened?’ Rivers asked.
‘I don’t know, he just started screaming.’
Rivers knelt beside Anderson and quickly checked that he wasn’t injured. ‘Was he asleep?’
‘No, he was waiting for the basin.’
Rivers looked at Featherstone. A thin trickle of blood was dribbling down his wet chin. Ah. Rivers stood up, and patted him on the arm. ‘Bleed elsewhere, Featherstone, there’s a good chap.’
Feathe
rstone – not in the best of tempers – strode out of the room. Rivers went across to the basin, rinsed his flannel out, wiped the bowl, gave the slightly blood-stained towel to the VAD and held the door open for her to leave. ‘There,’ he said, looking across at Anderson. ‘All gone.’
Slowly Anderson relaxed, becoming in the process aware of the stain between his legs. Rivers fetched his dressing gown and threw it across to him. ‘You’d better wrap this round you, you’ll be chilly once the sweating’s stopped.’ He went back to the washstand. ‘Do you mind if I borrow your flannel?’
He wiped the remaining shaving soap from his face, and checked to see he hadn’t cut himself when the VAD banged on his door. That would not have been helpful. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anderson pull the coverlet up to hide the wet patch in the bed. When Rivers next looked round, he was sitting on the bed, swinging his legs and doing his best to look casual. Rivers sat down, far enough away for Anderson not to have to worry about the smell. ‘Still as bad as that?’
‘I suppose it’s as bad as it looks.’
And this was the man who was going to return to medicine. ‘You know, we’re going to have to start talking about what you realistically want to do.’
‘We’ve been through all that.’
‘I can get you a month’s extension in October. After that –’
‘That’s all right. I can’t stay here for ever.’
Rivers hesitated. ‘Is there any sign of your wife managing to get up?’
Mrs Anderson’s visit had been much talked of, but had still not occurred.
‘No. It’s difficult with a child.’
Others managed. Rivers left Anderson to get dressed and went back to his own room to finish shaving. Now that the surge of excitement had worn off, he felt tired and unwell. Quite unfit for work, though the day would have to be got through somehow.
Willard was his first patient. He was following a regime which involved early-morning exercises in the pool, and was wheeled into the room, wet-haired and smelling of chlorine. He started at once. ‘I can’t share a room with that man.’
Rivers went on kneading Willard’s calf muscles.
‘Prior.’
‘You’re not sharing a room with him, are you? You just happen to be in the sick bay at the same time.’
‘In effect I’m sharing a room.’
‘That feels quite a bit firmer. Does it feel firmer to you?’
Willard felt his calf. ‘A bit. He wakes up screaming. It’s intolerable.’
‘No, well, I don’t suppose he likes it much either.’
Willard hesitated. ‘It’s not just that.’ He bent towards Rivers. ‘He’s one of those.’
Rivers looked and felt stunned. ‘I really don’t think he is, you know. You mustn’t take everything Prior says seriously. He likes to tease.’
‘He is. You can always tell.’
‘Press against the palm of my hand.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d consider moving him?’
‘No. And again. He’s ill, Mr Willard. He needs the sick bay. If anybody moves out, it’ll be you.’
Willard was followed by an unscheduled appointment with Featherstone, also demanding a change of room, though with more reason. Nobody could be expected to share with Anderson, he said. The nightmares and vomiting were too bad, and the loss of sleep was beginning to affect his nerves. All of this was true. Rivers listened and sympathized and promised Featherstone a change of room as soon as the September Boards had introduced some leeway into the system. At the moment the hospital was so crowded there was no hope of a room change for anybody.
Next, Lansdowne, an RAMC captain, whose long-standing claustrophobia had been uncovered by his inability to enter dugouts. A particularly testing session. Lansdowne was always demanding, though Rivers didn’t mind that, since he felt he was making progress. Then Fothersgill, Sassoon’s new room-mate, a fanatical Theosophist. He spoke throughout in mock medieval English – lots of ‘Yea verilys’ and ‘forsooths’ – as if his brief exposure to French horrors had frightened him into a sort of terminal facetiousness. He was forty-three, but with his iron-grey hair, monocle and stiff manners he seemed far older. He didn’t take long. Basically, he was suffering from being too old for the war, a complaint with which Rivers had a little more sympathy every day.
Then a meeting of the Hospital Management Committee. Fletcher, one of the two patient representatives, was a highly efficient, conscientious man whose stay in France had ended when he’d developed paranoid delusions that the quartermaster was deliberately and systematically depriving the men of food. This delusion he had now transferred to the hospital steward. The meeting went well enough until the standard of hospital catering came under discussion, and then Fletcher’s delusions came to the fore. Tempers became heated, and the meeting closed on an acrimonious note. It was an unfortunate incident, since it would certainly fuel the administration’s view that patients should take no part in the running of the hospital. Bryce, supported by Rivers, believed that patient participation was essential, even if this meant that Craiglockhart committee meetings sometimes developed a flavour all of their own.
After lunch, Rivers went along to Bryce’s room to discuss Broadbent. Broadbent had been to see his sick mother twice in recent months. Towards the end of the second visit a telegram arrived from Broadbent, saying that his mother had passed on, and asking permission to stay for the funeral. Naturally, permission had been granted. In due course Broadbent came back, wearing a black armband, and – rather less explicably – the red tabs of a staff officer. The red tabs disappeared overnight, but the black armband remained. For some days after that Broadbent sat around the patients’ common room, pink-eyed and sorrowful, being consoled by the VADs. This happy state of affairs came to a close when Mrs Broadbent arrived, demanding to know why she never heard from her son. Broadbent was now upstairs, in a locked room. It was not easy to see how a court-martial could be avoided.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on a succession of young men. Rivers, by now feeling quite ill, was carried through it only by his perception that some at least were showing signs of improvement. One young man in particular, who’d broken down after finding the mutilated body of his friend, had become dramatically better in the last few weeks.
After dinner, Rivers decided to abandon the paperwork he ought to have been doing and have an early night. No bath tonight, he decided, he was too tired. He got between the sheets and stretched out his legs, thinking he’d never been so glad to be in a bed in his life. After a while he pushed the window further open and lay listening to the rain, a soft hushing sound that seemed to fill the room. Soon, still listening, he drifted off to sleep.
He was woken at two am by a pain in his chest. At first he tried to convince himself it was indigestion, but the leaping and pounding of his heart soon suggested other, more worrying possibilities. He pulled himself up, and concentrated on breathing slowly and quietly.
The wind had risen while he was asleep, and rain pelted the glass. All over the hospital, he knew, men would be lying awake, listening to the rain and the wind, thinking of their battalions sinking deeper into the mud. Bad weather was bad for the nerves. Tomorrow would not be an easy day.
An hour later he would have given anything for tomorrow to arrive. He was getting all the familiar symptoms. Sweating, a constant need to urinate, breathlessness, the sense of blood not flowing but squeezing through veins. The slightest movement caused his heart to pound. He was relieved when dawn came and it was possible to summon the orderly.
Bryce arrived shortly afterwards, brisk and sympathetic. He produced a stethoscope, and told Rivers to take his pyjama jacket off. The stethoscope moved across his chest. He sat up, leant forward and felt the same procession of cold rings across his back. ‘What do you think’s wrong?’ Bryce asked, putting the stethoscope away.
‘War neurosis,’ Rivers said promptly. ‘I already stammer and I’m starting to twitch.’
Br
yce waited for Rivers to settle back against the pillows. ‘I suppose we’ve all got one of those. Your heartbeat’s irregular.’
‘Psychosomatic.’
‘And, as we keep telling the patients, psychosomatic symptoms are REAL. I think you should take some leave.’
Rivers shook his head. ‘No, I —’
‘That wasn’t a suggestion.’
‘Oh. I’ve got the September reports to do. If I do nothing else, I’ve got to do those.’
Bryce had started to smile. ‘There’s never going to be a convenient time, is there? Three weeks starting this weekend.’
A mutinous silence.
‘That gives you time to do the reports, provided you don’t see patients. All right?’ Bryce patted the coverlet and stood up. ‘I’ll tell Miss Crowe to put a notice up.’
Rivers was going on leave. He hadn’t been down to dinner for the past few days, but he was there tonight, Sassoon saw, looking rather better than he’d done recently, though still very tired. The MO’s table was the noisiest in the room. Even at this distance you could distinguish Brock’s high, reedy voice, MacIntyre’s broad Glaswegian, Bryce’s Edinburgh, Ruggles’s American, and Rivers, who, when he got excited in a discussion, as he often did, sounded rather like a sodawater syphon going off. Nobody, listening to him now, would have thought him capable of those endless silences.
Fothersgill, his long nose twitching fastidiously, had started to complain about the soup. ‘Nay, verily,’ he said. ‘A man knoweth not what manner of thing he eateth.’ He laughed as he said it, the laugh of a man who takes small discomforts very seriously indeed. Sassoon, marooned between two particularly bad stammerers, felt no need to take part in the conversation. Instead, he twisted round in his seat and looked for Owen, remembering the last poem he’d been shown. ‘Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death;/Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland —/Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our band…’ Precisely, Sassoon thought. And now we complain about the soup. Or rather, they do.