‘Just a dash.’
They moved across to the fireside chairs. Manning pulled off the sheets, and Prior settled back against the stiff brocade. It didn’t give at all, but held him tensely upright. They started making the sort of conversation they might have made if they’d been introduced in the mess. Prior watched Manning carefully; noting the MC ribbon, the wound stripe, the twitches, the signs of tension, the occasional stammer. He was in a state, though it was difficult to tell how much of his nervousness was due to the situation. Which was dragging on a bit. If this went on they’d demolish the whole bloody bottle and still be swopping regimental chit-chat at midnight. All very nice, Prior thought, but not what I came for. He noticed that Manning’s eyes, though they roamed all over the place, always returned to the stars on Prior’s sleeve. Well, you knew I was an officer, he said silently. He was beginning to suspect Manning might be one of those who cannot – simply cannot – let go sexually with a social equal. Prior sighed, and stood up. ‘Do you mind if I take this off?’ he said. ‘I’m quite warm.’
He wasn’t warm. In fact, to coin a phrase, he was bloody nithered. However. He took off his tie, tunic and shirt, and threw them over the back of a chair. Manning said nothing, simply watched. Prior ran his fingers through his cropped hair till it stood up in spikes, lit a cigarette, rolled it in a particular way along his bottom lip, and smiled. He’d transformed himself into the sort of working-class boy Manning would think it was all right to fuck. A sort of seminal spittoon. And it worked. Manning’s eyes grew dark as his pupils flared. Bending over him, Prior put his hand between his legs, thinking he’d probably never felt a spurt of purer class antagonism than he felt at that moment. He roughened his accent. ‘A’ right?’
‘Yes. Let’s go upstairs.’
Prior followed him. On the first floor a door stood open, leading into a large bedroom with a double bed. Manning pulled the door shut. Prior smiled faintly. ’E would not take Oi into the bed where ’e ’ad deflowered ‘is broide. Instead ‘e went up and up and bloody up. To what were obviously the servants’ quarters. Manning pushed open a door at the end of the corridor, handed Prior the lamp and said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’
Prior went in. A double bed with a brass bedstead almost filled the tiny room. He sat on the edge and bounced up and down. It was quite possibly the noisiest bed he’d ever encountered. Thank God the house was empty. Apart from the bed there was a washstand with a jug and bowl, a table with a looking-glass, and a small closet curtained off. He got up and pulled the curtain back. Two housemaids’ uniforms hung there, looking almost like the maids themselves, the sleeves and caps had been so neatly arranged. A smell came from the closet: lavender and sweat, a sad smell. Prior’s mother had started her life in service in just such a house as this. He looked round the room, the freezing little box of a room, with its view of roofs, and, on a sudden impulse, got one of the uniforms out and buried his face in the armpit, inhaling the smell of sweat. This impulse had nothing to do with sex, though it came from a layer of personality every bit as deep. Manning came back into the room just as Prior raised his head. Seeing Prior with the uniform held against him, Manning looked, it had to be said, daunted. Prior smiled, and put the uniform back on the peg.
Manning set a small jar down on the table by the bed. The click of glass on wood brought them into a closer, tenser relationship than anything they’d so far managed to achieve. Prior finished undressing and lay down on the bed. Manning’s leg was bad. Very bad. Prior leant forward to examine the knee, and for a moment they might have been boys in the playground again, examining each other’s scabs.
‘It looks as if you’re out of it.’
‘Probably. The tendons’ve shortened, you see. They think I’ve got about as much movement as I’m going to get. But then who knows? The way things are going, is anybody out of it?’
Prior straightened up, and, since he was in the neighbourhood, began to rub his face across the hair in Manning’s groin. Manning’s cock stirred and rose and Prior took it into his mouth, but even then, for a long time, he simply played, flicking his tongue round and round the glistening dome. Manning’s thighs tautened. After a while his hand came up and caressed Prior’s cropped hair, his thumb massaging the nape of his neck. Prior raised his head and saw that Manning looked nervous, rightly, since in this situation it was a gesture of tenderness that would precipitate violence, if anything did. And Manning was in no state to cope with that. He went back to his sucking, clasping Manning’s buttocks in his two hands and moving his mouth rapidly up and down the shaft. Manning pushed him gently away and got into bed. They lay stretched out for a moment side by side. Prior rolled on to his elbow and started to stroke Manning’s chest, belly and thighs. He was thinking how impossible it is to sum up sex in terms of who stuffs what into where. This movement of his hand had in it lust; resentment, of Manning’s use of the room among other things; sympathy, for the wound; envy, because Manning was honourably out of it… And a growing awareness that while he had been looking at Manning, Manning had also been looking at him. Prior’s expression hardened. He thought, Well, at least I don’t twitch as much as you do. The stroking hand stopped at Manning’s waist, and he tried to turn him over, but Manning resisted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Like this.’
Athletic sod. Prior unscrewed the jar, greased his cock with a mixture of vaseline and spit, and wiped the residue on Manning’s arse. He guided Manning’s legs up his chest, being exceedingly careful not to jerk the knee. He was too eager, and the position was hopeless for control, he was fighting himself before he’d got an inch in, and then Manning yelped and tried to pull away. Prior started to withdraw, then suddenly realized that Manning needed to be hurt. ‘Keep still,’ he said, and went on fucking. It was a dangerous game. Prior was capable of real sadism, and knew it, and the knee was only a inch or so away from his hand. He came quickly, with deep shuddering groans, a feeling of being pulled out of himself that started in his throat. Carefully, he lowered Manning’s legs and sucked him off. He was so primed he was clutching Prior’s head and gasping almost before he’d started. ‘I needed that,’ he said, when it was over. ‘I needed a good fucking.’
You all do, Prior thought. Manning went to the bathroom. Prior reached out and turned the looking-glass towards him. Into this glass they had looked, half past five every morning, winter and summer, yawning, bleary-eyed, checking to see their caps were on straight and their hair tucked away. He remembered his mother telling him that, in the house where she’d worked, if a maid met a member of the family in the corridor she had to stand with her face turned to the wall.
Manning came back carrying the whisky bottle and glasses. He was limping badly. Despite Prior’s efforts the position couldn’t have done the knee any good.
‘Where d’you get it?’ Prior asked, nodding at the wound.
‘Passchendaele.’
‘Oh, yes. Your lot were in the assault on the ridge?’
‘That’s right.’ Manning poured the whisky and sat at the end of the bed, propping himself up against the bedstead, and stretching his left leg out in front of him. ‘Great fun.’
Prior said, ‘I’ve just had a Board.’ He didn’t want to talk about his condition, but he was incapable of leaving the subject alone. Manning’s silence on the subject, when a question would have been so much more natural, had begun to irritate him.
‘What did they say?’ Manning asked.
‘They haven’t said anything yet. I’m supposed to be Permanent Home Service, but with things the way they are…’
Manning hesitated, then asked, ‘It is neurasthenia, isn’t it?’
No, Prior wanted to say, it’s raging homicidal mania, with a particular predilection for dismembering toffee-nosed gits with wonky knees. ‘No, it’s asthma,’ he said. ‘I was neurasthenic, but then I had two asthmatic attacks in the hospital, so that confused things a bit.’
‘Which hospital were you in?’
‘Craiglockhart. It’s up in —’
‘Ah, then you know Rivers.’
Prior stared. ‘He was my doctor. Still is. He’s… he’s in London now.’
‘Yes, I know.’
It was Prior’s turn not to ask the obvious question.
‘Are you still on sick leave?’ Manning asked, after a pause.
‘No, I’m at the Ministry of Munitions. In the…’ He looked at Manning. ‘And that’s where I’ve seen you. I knew I had.’
Manning smiled, but he was very obviously not pleased. ‘Just as well I didn’t call myself “Smith”. I thought about it.’
‘If you’re going to do that I’d remove the letters from the hall table first. They aren’t addressed to “Smith”.’ Prior looked down into his glass, and gave up the struggle. ‘How do you know Rivers?’
Manning smiled. ‘He’s my doctor, too.’
‘Shell-shock?’
‘No. Not exactly. I… er… I was picked up by the police. About two months ago. Not quite caught in the act, but… The young man disappeared as soon as we got to the police station. Anyway.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, we all sat around. Nobody did anything unpleasant. I sent for my solicitor, and eventually he arrived, and they let me go. Wound helped. Medal helped.’ He looked directly at Prior. ‘Connections helped. You mustn’t despise me too easily, you know. I’m not a fool. And then I went home and waited. My solicitor seemed to think if it went to court I’d get two years, but they probably wouldn’t give me hard labour because of the leg.’
‘That’s big of them.’
‘Yes. Isn’t it? Then somebody said the thing to do was to go to a psychologist and get treatment and and… and that would help. So I went to Dr Head, who has quite a reputation in this field – I was actually told in so many words “Henry Head can cure sodomites” – and he said he couldn’t do me, he was snowed under, and he recommended Rivers. So I went to him, and he said he’d take me on.’
‘Do you want to be cured?’
‘No.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Talks. Or rather, I talk. He listens.’
‘About sex?’
‘No, not very often. The war, mainly. You see that’s where the confusion comes in because he took one look at me and decided I was neurasthenic. I mean, I can see his point. I was in quite a state when I came out of hospital. A lot worse than I realized at the time. One night at dinner I just picked up a vase and smashed it against the wall. It was quite a large party, about twelve people, and there was this awful… silence. And I couldn’t explain why I’d done it. Except the vase was hideous. But then my wife said, “So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?”’ He smiled. ‘I can’t talk to anybody else, so I talk to him.’
Prior put his hand on Manning’s arm. ‘Are you going to be all right? I mean, are they going to leave you alone?’
‘I don’t know. I think if they were going to bring charges they’d’ve brought them by now.’ His voice deepened. ‘“At that moment there was a knock on the door…”’
Prior was thinking. ‘All the same, it’s rather convenient, isn’t it? That you’re neurasthenic?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘I meant for Rivers. He doesn’t have to talk abou —’
‘I don’t know what Rivers thinks. Anyway, it’s the war I need to talk about. And even with him, you know, there are some things I couldn’t—’
‘You will.’
They lay and looked at each other. Manning said, ‘You were going to say which part of the ministry—’
‘Yes, so I was. Intelligence.’
‘With Major Lode?’
‘Yes. With Major Lode. And you?’
‘I’m on the fifth floor.’
Evidently the location was the answer. Manning turned and threw his arm across Prior’s chest. ‘Do you fancy a bit of turn and turn about? Or don’t you do that?’
Prior smiled. ‘I do anything.’
TWO
Charles Manning left the Ministry of Munitions two hours earlier than usual and went to his house, where he’d arranged to meet a builder who’d promised to repair the bomb damage. It was mid-afternoon. A surprisingly sticky day for spring, warm and damp. When the sun shone, as it did fitfully, emerging from banks of black cloud, the young leaves on the trees glowed a vivid, almost virulent green.
He was walking abstractedly past the bombed site, when the crunch of grit and the smell of charred brick made him pause, and peer through a gap in the fence. The demolished houses had left an outline of themselves on either side of the gap, like after-images on the retina. He saw the looped and trellised bedroom wallpaper that once only the family and its servants would have seen, exposed now to wind and rain and the gaze of casual passers-by. Nothing moved in that wilderness, but, somewhere out of sight, dust leaked steadily from the unstaunchable wound.
Suddenly a cat appeared, a skinny cat, one of the abandoned pets that hung around the square. It began picking its way among the rubble, sharply black and sleek, a silhouette at once angular and sinuous. It stopped, and Manning was aware of baleful yellow eyes turned in his direction, of a cleft pink nose raised to sift the air. Then it continued on its way, the soft pads of its feet finding spaces between shards of glittering glass. Manning watched till it was out of sight. Then, thinking he must get a move on, he swung his stiff leg up the steps to his house and inserted his key in the lock, remembering, with a faint smile, that he must pull and not push.
There was an envelope in the post-box. He took it out and carried it through into the drawing-room, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the darkness. A heavy smell of soot. There must have been another fall: chimney-sweeping was another job one couldn’t get done. He looked down at the envelope. Typewritten. Tradesman, probably. His family and friends all knew he was staying at his club. He put the letter down on the dust-sheet that covered the sofa and walked to the other end of the room, where he opened the shutters, letting in a flood of sickly yellow light.
He went to look at the crack above the door. Is it a load-bearing wall? the builder had asked. Manning thumped with his clenched fist. It didn’t sound hollow or feel flimsy, but then these houses were very solidly built. He crossed to the front wall, banged again and thought perhaps he could detect a difference. Not much in it, though. He went back to the crack and noticed that the whole surround of the door had been loosened. In fact the more closely one examined it the worse it appeared. That looks ominous, Prior had said, smiling slightly. Odd lad. Even as he felt himself begin to stir at the recollection of the evening, Manning’s mind was at work, categorizing. At first, noting Prior’s flattened vowels, he’d thought, oh yes. Temporary gentleman. A nasty, snobbish little phrase, but everybody used it, though obviously one tried not to use it in connection with people one liked. But the amazing thing was how persistent one’s awareness of class distinction was. The mind seemed capable of making these minute social assessments in almost any circumstances. He remembered the Somme, how the Northumberlands and Durhams had lain, where the machine-guns had caught them, in neat swathes, like harvested wheat. Later that night, crashing along a trench in pitch-blackness, trying desperately to work out where the frontage he was responsible for ended, he’d stumbled into a Northumberlands’ officer, very obviously shaken by the carnage inflicted on his battalion. And who could blame him? God knows how many they’d lost. Manning, sympathizing, steadying, well aware that his own nerves had not yet been tested, had none the less found time to notice that the Northumberlands’ officer dropped his aitches. He’d been jarred by it. Horrified by the reaction, but jarred nevertheless. And the odd thing was he knew if the man had been a private, he would not have been jarred, he would have handled the situation much better.
As the evening with Prior had gone on, the description ‘temporary gentleman’ had come to seem less and less appropriate. It suggested one of those dreadful people – well, they were dreadful – who aped their betters, anxiou
s to get everything ‘right’, and became, in the process, pallid, morally etiolated and thoroughly nauseating. Prior was saved from that not because he didn’t imitate – he did – but because he wasn’t anxious. Once or twice one might almost have thought one detected a glint of amusement. A hint of parody, even. All the same, the basic truth was the man was neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Socially. Sexually too, of course, though this was a less comfortable reflection. He had a girl in the north, he said, but then they all said that. Manning had suggested they should meet again, and Prior had agreed, but politely, without much enthusiasm. Probably he wouldn’t come, and probably it would be just as well. His working at the Ministry brought the whole thing rather too close to… well. Too close.
Manning looked at his watch. Ten minutes before the builder was due. He walked across to the piano, lifted the dust-sheet and brought out the photograph of Jane and the boys. Taken last summer. What a little podge Robert had been. Still was. He’d always be a round-cheeked, nondescript sort of child. He was clutching the boat as if he suspected somebody was planning to take it away from him. No doubt James had been. He’s like me, Manning thought, looking at Robert. He felt an almost painful love for his elder son, and sometimes he heard himself speaking too sharply to the boy, but it was only because he could see so much of himself. He knew the areas of vulnerability, and that made him afraid, because in the end one cannot protect one’s children. Everybody – Robert too, probably, that was the sad thing – assumed James was his favourite. It wasn’t true. His love for James was an altogether sunnier, less complicated emotion. He had more fun with James, because he could see James was resilient. He had his mother’s dark, clearly defined brows, her cheekbones, her jaw, the same amused, direct look. The photograph didn’t do her justice; somehow the sunlight had bleached the strength out of her face. Probably she looked prettier because of it, but she also looked a good deal less like Jane. ‘It was hideous.’ The vase he’d thrown at the wall. ‘So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?’ Typical Jane. It sounded unsympathetic, but it wasn’t. Not really. She was a woman who could have faced any amount of physical danger without flinching, but the shadows in the mind terrified her.