We are Craiglockhart’s success stories. Look at us. We don’t remember, we don’t feel, we don’t think – at least not beyond the confines of what’s needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.
PART THREE
Fourteen
SHEER FIGHTING
BOTH SIDES PAY THE PRICE
HUNS WAIT FOR THE BAYONET
Prior would have been in that, Rivers thought. He picked the paper up from his breakfast tray and made a real effort to concentrate. It was clear, even from this gung-ho report, that casualties had been heavy. No point checking the casualty lists yet: individual names took at least a week to come through. But he could probably expect a field postcard in the next few days, if Prior was all right. He’d sounded fine in his last letter, but that was ten days ago.
Reading it, Rivers had felt the stab of envy he always experienced on receiving letters from men serving in France. If the wretched war had to happen he’d rather have spent it with Marshall-of-the-Ten-Wounds than with Telford-of-the-Pickled-Penis. He tried to focus on the details of the engagement, but the print blurred before his eyes. And his boiled egg – though God knows what it had cost Mrs Irving to buy – was going down like lead. He really thought he’d be sick if he forced any more of it down. He took his glasses off, put them on the bedside table and pushed the tray away. He meant only to rest a while before starting again, but his fingers slackened and twitched on the counterpane and, after a few minutes, the newspaper with its headlines shrieking about distant battles slipped sighing to the floor.
Ngea’s skull, jammed into the v of a cleft stick, bleached in the sun. A solitary bluebottle buzzed in and out of the eye sockets and, finding nothing there of interest, sailed away into the blue sky.
On his way down to the beach to bathe, Rivers paused to look at the skull. Only a month ago he’d spoken to this man, had even held his hand briefly on parting. No wonder the islanders wore necklaces of pepeu leaves to guard themselves against tomate gani yambo: the Corpse-eating Spirit.
Later the same day he saw the little boy whom Lembu had brought back from Ysabel squatting listlessly outside Njiru’s hut, poking about in the dust with a small stick. He was not crying, but he looked dazed. The story was he’d been bought, but Rivers was not inclined to believe it. In these islands – still, in spite of the abolition of head-hunting, warrior communities – not even the poorest family would willingly part with a son. Abduction was more likely. He watched the child for several minutes, wanting to go to him, and yet knowing the appearance of a strange white man would only terrify him more.
‘Are they going to kill him?’ Hocart said, lying sleepless in bed that night.
‘No, they won’t do that – they’d have to kill us too.’
‘Perhaps that wouldn’t worry them.’
‘The Commissioner’s response to it would.’
But after Hocart was uneasily asleep, twitching and muttering, Rivers lay awake, thinking that if the islanders wanted to get rid of them it wouldn’t be too difficult. White men died of blackwater fever all the time, and no doubt there were poisons that mimicked the symptoms. You only had to look at Ngea’s skull to know that by the time the next steamer put in there wouldn’t be enough of them left to make investigation possible. Moreover, the next steamer would be Brennan’s, since he was the local trader, and, confronted by any sign of trouble, he’d simply skedaddle as fast as possible. No, they’d just have to wait and see, and be cautious.
Next morning, when he arrived in the village, the little boy had gone.
They were invited to witness the placing of Ngea’s skull in the skull house. Njiru officiated.
At dawn they were woken by the screams of pigs being slaughtered, and all morning columns of smoke had risen from the cooking fires. It was noon before the ceremony started, the sun crashing down on shoulders and heads, the heat intensified by two fires, the sacrificial fire on the hearth in front of the skull house, and the common fire where Rivers and Hocart sat along with people from the village and the surrounding hamlets. Rivers looked out for the small captive boy, but could not see him. Beside him Lembu was plaiting a creeper which he used to tie Ngea’s jaw-bone to his skull, before placing a diadem of shells round the cranium and other shells in the sockets of the eyes.
Across the fire, moving figures shimmered in the heat. A woman with a baby in her arms, Nanja, whose own child had died in the confining house and who was now nursing Kwini, the emaciated baby whom Rivers had first seen with Njiru. The child worried at the nipple, guzzling and snuffling – already her wasted thighs had begun to fill out. She would live, he thought, and the idea cheered him for, to western eyes, the stacked-up skulls made disturbing companions.
Njiru raised Ngea’s crowned skull above his head, and a silence fell, broken only by the careless cries of the children, but they were some distance away. Rivers could follow most of Njiru’s prayer without need of an interpreter. ‘We offer pudding, we offer pig, to you the ghosts. Be propitious in war, be propitious in the sea fight, be propitious at the fort, be propitious at the burning of the thatch. Receive the chiefly dead …’ Here Njiru placed Ngea’s skull in the house. ‘And be you propitious and smite our enemies, oh, oh, oh!’
It was a prayer for success in the great head-hunting raid that ought to have concluded the mourning for the dead chief. The Vavolo, the Night Festival, at which all the young women were free – tugele – to all the returning warriors. But the raid would not happen. The prayer could not be answered. Njiru put pork and yam pudding in the sacrificial fire, whose flames burned dull in the sunlight. Then he took the remains of the pudding and walked round the stones that encircled the clearing, placing a mouthful of food on each stone. The stones were called tomate patu, stone ghosts, and were erected as memorials to men who died and whose bodies could not be brought home. Rivers watched him go from stone to stone.
Head-hunting had to be banned, and yet the effects of banning it were everywhere apparent in the listlessness and lethargy of the people’s lives. Head-hunting was what they had lived for. Though it might seem callous or frivolous to say so, head-hunting had been the most tremendous fun and without it life lost almost all its zest.
This was a people perishing from the absence of war. It showed in the genealogies, the decline in the birth rate from one generation to the next – the island’s population was less than half what it had been in Rinambesi’s youth – and much of that decline was deliberate.
Against the background of such despair might not the temptation of taking one small head in honour of a dead chief prove irresistible? Raids, no, they couldn’t do that, the punishment was too severe. But who was to miss one small boy?
Rivers ate the baked yams and pork offered to him, but remained thoughtful. Once he looked up to see Njiru on the other side of the fire, a tall, lean, twisted shape wavering in the column of heat, and surprised on the other man’s face an expression of – bitterness? No, stronger than that. Hatred, even.
Kundaite could interpret talk blong tomate: the language of ghosts. Sometimes, he said, a meeting was held on the night the old ghosts arrived to take the new ghost back to Sonto with them, and he would question the ghosts and the people would hear them speak. Would this be done for Ngea? Rivers asked. Kundaite didn’t know, he wasn’t sure, he didn’t think so. Would it be done if we give you ten sticks of tobacco? Kundaite nodded. He was given five and promised the other five the following morning. Would they hear Ngea speak? Hocart asked. No, was the reply. ‘Ngea he no speak yet. He all same small fellow piccanini.’ Kundaite, grasping his tobacco sticks, seemed to be worried. ‘Don’t tell Njiru,’ he said at last.
They all met at sunset in what had been Ngea’s hall, and sat cross-legged around the fire. It had been made with green sticks and smoked badly. They coughed, their eyes watered, they waited, nothing happened. Outside it was totally dark, for the m
oon had not yet risen. Nanja brought in dry sticks, feeding them into the fire skilfully, one by one, until the flames crackled and spurted. Kwini cried and Nanja jiggled and soothed her. Older children sat bigeyed in the firelight, and Rivers felt his own eyelids grow heavy, for he had been up since dawn walking miles in the heat. He blinked hard, making himself look round the circle. Emele – Namboko Emele as she must now be called – was there, wearing brown bark cloth without lime or necklaces. But not Njiru, a surprising absence surely, since he’d placed Ngea’s skull in the skull house.
Kundaite came in and sat beside the door in the side of the hut. At a word from him the torches were extinguished, though Rivers could still see people’s faces clearly, leaping and shining in the firelight. Silence fell, and deepened, and deepened again. Kundaite closed his eyes and began to moan beneath his breath. Rivers watched him sceptically, wondering whether the attempt to induce a trance state was genuine or merely histrionic. Abruptly, Kundaite seemed to come to himself. He put three sticks of tobacco in the fire as a sacrificial offering, saying casually that the ghosts were on their way from Sonto. A long silence. Nothing happened. Somebody suggested the ghosts were afraid of a dog that was lying by the fire. The animal raised its head on hearing its name, decided there was nothing to worry about and settled down again with a sigh. Others said the ghosts were afraid of the white men.
River’s back and thighs were aching from the squatting position. Suddenly Kundaite said, ‘Listen, the canoes.’ It was clear, looking round the circle, that they were hearing the swish of paddles. Joy and grief mingled on every face. Emele started the musical wailing characteristic of the women, but stopped when Kundaite held up his hand.
A tense silence. Then somebody whistled. The sound was curiously difficult to locate. Rivers looked round the faces, but could not see who was making the sound. The people began calling out names, familiar to him from the genealogies, each person calling the name of a relative who had recently died. Some not so recently. Namboko Taru called for her grandmother. Then the name Onda was called and somebody whistled again. Rivers could see Hocart also looking round the room, trying to locate the whistler.
A discussion about the white men followed, the ghost’s whistles being translated by Kundaite. Who were the white men? Why were they here? Why did they want to hear the language of ghosts? Did the ghosts object to the white men’s presence? Kundaite asked. ‘What do we do if they say “yes”?’ Hocart asked, not moving his lips. ‘Get out quick.’
But the ghosts did not object. Onda, whistling, said he had never seen white men. Kundaite pointed to Rivers and Hocart. Onda, apparently satisfied, fell silent. Kundaite’s father, also called Kundaite, came next and asked for tobacco. The living Kundaite put his last two sticks in the fire, saying, ‘Here is tobacco for you, Kunda. Smoke and depart.’ Namboko Rupe, Ngea’s mother, spoke next, saying she had come to take Ngea to Sonto. Other relatives of Ngea followed. At last Kundaite said that Ngea himself was in the room.
A deeper silence fell. Rivers felt the hairs on his arms rise. Namboko Emele began to wail for her husband. Kundaite said, Don’t cry. He’s going to Sonto. Ngea’s mother said, He must go now. He must blow the conch and come to Sonto. By now the room was full of whistles, slithering up and down the walls and all across the floor. At times the sounds seemed almost to be a ripple running across the skin. Namboko Emele began to wail again, and the other women joined in. ‘Don’t cry,’ Ngea’s mother said again, through Kundaite’s mouth. ‘I have come to take him to Sonto.’ Then, Kundaite said, Ngea blew the conch. Everybody in the room, except Rivers and Hocart, heard it, and then the whistles faded and there was silence save for the musical wails and cries of the women.
Ten years later, throwing off hot sheets, Rivers reflected that the questions the ghosts had asked had all been questions the living people wanted answered. What were the white men doing on the island? Were they as harmless as they appeared? Why did they want to hear the language of ghosts? Was it possible the spirits might be offended by their presence?
At Craiglockhart, Sassoon, trying to decide whether he should abandon his protest and go back to France, had woken to find the ghost of a dead comrade standing by his bed. And thereafter, on more than one occasion, shadowy figures had gathered out of the storm, asking him, Why was he not in the line? Why had he deserted his men?
The ghosts were not an attempt at evasion, Rivers thought, either by Siegfried or by the islanders. Rather, the questions became more insistent, more powerful, for being projected into the mouths of the dead.
Walking back to the tent, a circle of torchlight swaying round their feet, their shoulders bumping as they tried to stay abreast on the narrow path, Rivers and Hocart talked about the seance. A silly word that didn’t seem to suit the occasion, but Rivers couldn’t think of a better.
‘Who was whistling?’ Hocart asked.
‘I don’t know.’
The occasion had moved him in a way he’d never expected when they sat down by that fire. They talked about it for a while, getting the sequence of events clear in their minds, for they had not been able to take notes. Then Rivers said, ‘Njiru wasn’t there.’
‘No, I noticed that.’
Back at the tent Hocart said, ‘Shall I light the lamp?’
‘No, don’t bother. Not for me anyway. I can’t wait to get to bed.’ He was unbuckling his belt as he spoke, rubbing the skin underneath where trapped sweat prickled. He kicked his trousers to one side and lay down on the bed, only to cry out as his head came into violent contact with something hard and cold. Hocart came in with the torch, his face white behind the beam. On the pillow, indenting it as Rivers’s head would have done, was an axe. Rivers picked it up and held it closer to the light. The carving on the handle was rather fine by the standards of the island, and there was a knot, a flaw in the wood, close to the blade.
‘Somebody must have left it behind,’ Hocart said uncertainly.
‘Well, yes, obviously.’
‘No, I mean by accident. Whoever it is, he’ll be back for it in the morning.’
‘I hope not,’ Rivers said dryly. ‘It’s Ngea’s.’
‘Are you sure?’
Rivers indicated the knot in the wood. ‘Yes, I remember this, I noticed it when they put it in the era with him.’ He stroked the blade. ‘No, I’m afraid we’ve been asking too many awkward questions. We’re being warned.’
Fifteen
10 October 1918
Back into corrugated iron privies again, which are dry but in other ways less comfortable than dug-outs. Owen has somehow managed to stick a portrait of Siegfried Sassoon to the wall of his. Sassoon in distinctly Byronic mode, I should say – not the Sassoon I remember, legging it down the main corridor at Craiglockhart with his golf-clubs on his back, hell-bent on getting out of the place as fast as possible. I stood and stared, gawped at it. And suddenly I was back in Rivers’s room, watching the late afternoon sun glint on his glasses during one of his endless silences. Rivers’s silences are not manipulative. (Mine are. Always.) He’s not trying to make you say more than you want, he’s trying to create a safe space round what you’ve said already, so you can think about it without shitting yourself. White net curtains drifting in on the breeze. Pok-pok, pok-pok, from the tennis courts, until somebody misses and the rhythm goes.
Owen said, tentatively, something I didn’t quite catch. Something to the effect that we ‘old Craiglockhartians’ must stick together. Once that would have made me puke. I always felt, watching Owen at Craiglockhart, that there was some kind of fantasy going on, that he was having the public-school education he’d missed. I always wanted to say, it’s a loony-bin, Owen. Who do you think you’re kidding? I don’t feel that now – perhaps because Craiglockhart was a shared experience of failure, and the past few weeks have expunged it for both of us. Wiped it out in blood, you might say, if you were histrionic, and I am. And not our own blood either.
Would that remark deserve one of Rivers’s silences? I
don’t know. Sometimes I used to think he was back with his fucking head-hunters – he really does love them, his whole face lights up when he talks about them – and that gives him a slightly odd perspective on ‘the present conflict’ as they say.
I’ve been recommended for the MC for going out to bring Hallet in. I’d have been like a dog with two tails three years ago. Hallet’s still alive, anyway. More than a medal, I wish somebody would just tell me I did the right thing.
11 October
Today we all had to stand up in front of the men and promulgate a new order. ‘Peace talk in any form is to cease immediately in the Fourth Army.’
The brass hats needn’t worry. Some of the men were sitting on bales of straw cleaning equipment while one read aloud from the paper: Austro-Hungarian Empire collapses, peace imminent, etc. Jenkins, a wizened weasel of a man (must be over age, surely), hawked the accumulated phlegm of four long years into his mouth and spat on his rifle. Then he went back to polishing it. Can’t think of a better comment.
And yet. And yet. We all, at some level, think we may have made it, we may be going to be all right. At any moment now the guns may stop. Oddly enough it doesn’t help.
We spend our time in the usual way while ‘at rest’. Baths, change of clothes, general clean-up, exercises, compulsory games, church parade. Oh, and of course, gas drills. A lot of the men are coughing and hoicking and wheezing because they were slow putting on their masks. And perhaps deliberately in some cases; perhaps some people thought they’d get sent back. If so, they’ve been thoroughly disillusioned, and the proof is the endless cough, cough, cough, cough that accompanies all other activities. Owen irritated me profoundly by saying it was their own fault. He put his mask on in time, he’s all right, he says. I’m afraid I let fly. The only person round here who has the right to be smug about surviving a gas attack is me. ME.