‘’Fraid she’ll gobble you up?’ Her expression softened. ‘You’re going to get soaked.’
It was starting to rain. They linked arms; she felt him shivering through his thin shirt.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘If we walk quickly …’
By the end of the street, the rain had thickened to a downpour and was bouncing off the pavements. Flitting along between the street lamps, they were blotched into a single shadow. His trousers, her skirt, were quickly soaked to the knee. Outside Catherine’s door, they looked up at the light, at the silver lines that slanted away into the darkness.
‘Why don’t you come up?’
‘Catherine might be in.’
‘And that bothers you?’ She seemed to regret the sharpness. ‘No, please, I’d like to talk to you.’
‘I thought we had.’
‘No, properly. About the hospital. I promise I won’t mention Kit.’
A heavier squall of rain settled the matter. It would be madness to walk back in this. He stood shivering and wiping his eyes as she unlocked the door to let them in.
Twenty-one
Rain beating down on Queen’s Hospital, peppering the rhododendrons in the formal gardens, shaking the last petals from a rose.
A nurse emerges from one of the huts, peers up into the lowering sky and runs, stiff-legged, splashing through puddles, to the shelter of the main building.
The windows of the hut are blind with rain. ‘Bloody hell, will you look at that,’ somebody says, but though several men glance up from their card game, nobody bothers to comment.
Neville, in bed, dozing, is only half aware of the gust of wind that slams doors shut and blows dead leaves along the slippery walkways. His eyes flicker behind his closed lids.
Rain gleams on the capes of a party of stretcher-bearers preparing to go out, drips from their helmets, drives pale furrows in their mud-daubed skin. Their eyeballs, in the darkness of the trench, appear unnaturally big and bright.
Brooke’s voice, echoing around the hut, along the covered walkway, and into the formal garden where a pale mulch of rose petals half covers the wet soil, says:
‘Right, then. Off we go.’
He was lying naked on the side of a shell hole when they got to him. The blast had blown off almost all his clothes. He was curled up, comma-shaped, like a newborn baby who hasn’t yet cast off the constriction of the womb. Deep, black night. A prickle of stars; no moon. They’d been crawling on their bellies through mud for a hundred years and were close, now, to the German trenches. The bottom of the crater was flooded: oily, iridescent swirls catching the faint light of the stars. Then, for a long, long moment, the whole scene was brilliantly illuminated as a Very light went up and hung, trembling, in the black sky. Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. Odd little tatters of words and phrases blew through his brain, nothing to do with anything that was happening here.
They slipped and slithered over the rim down to where Warren lay, coiled in his foetal dream. Neville noticed that Brooke didn’t bother to check for a pulse. They rolled Warren on to his back. Rain fell steadily on to his face, but he didn’t blink or turn his head away. It was strange to crouch beside him, watching the Very lights bloom and die in his dead eyes.
They were going to have to drag him all the way. The fighting had been too fierce to allow chivalrous gestures to the stretcher-bearers of either side. The rain became heavier, bouncing on the black surface of the water. They tried to get a grip on him, but their numbed hands slid across his naked flesh and they had to fasten a rope round his waist before they could begin dragging him, against gravity, away from the stinking water and up to the crater’s edge. They crouched there for a moment, waiting for another Very light to die. Neville could see Brooke’s cheekbones gleaming like a skull.
‘Come on,’ Brooke said. ‘If they fire, they fire.’
Slowly, infinitely slowly, they started to drag Warren back to their own lines. It must have taken thirty minutes or more, but though firing continued, causing every muscle to jerk, nobody seemed to be firing specifically at them. They crawled through the gap in their wire, with a further delay when the few remaining shreds of Warren’s tunic snagged on one of the barbs. Boiler reached behind and tore it free. And then they were clambering, falling rather, into the trench in a great gush splother cascade of mud and water and for a minute Neville just sat there, wiping mud out of his eyes, but then he couldn’t be bothered to do even that, he just let it drip.
Brooke was already on his feet.
‘Come on,’ he said, sharply. They heaved Warren on to the stretcher and set off along the crowded trench, Boiler at the front calling out ‘Beep-beep!’ to secure a passage. He seemed to have no nerves, Boiler. No nerves, no manners, no eyelashes, no bloody nothing, but still he survived. Stuck a tab end in his mouth, squinted through the smoke, foul-mouthed, fond of dirty jokes, laughed among the dying without a care in the world, apparently. Sentimental, though, about horses and mules.
At the back of the stretcher, Neville’s hands were rubbed raw, his thoughts scattered like pins. All he could think was: I mustn’t let him drop. And then he wanted to laugh, because what the hell did it matter whether they dropped him or not? Warren was past caring. Out of the front line they trudged, down the communication trenches, jam-packed with men crowding up for the counter-attack, bulky figures they were in the darkness, stamping and steaming like horses. Cigarettes everywhere, illuminating a mouth, a hand, an eye.
One more corner and they’d reached the regimental first-aid post. Tarpaulin had been rigged up over the entrance; the walking wounded queued underneath it, teeth chattering in blue faces, blackened wounds oozing blood. The slight wounds attempted jokes, but jerked like the others as a shell whizzed over.
Boiler pushed through the crowd, down the steps to the dugout where they set the stretcher down. Neville flexed his raw fingers and then, suddenly, in a great explosion of rage, kicked Warren in the ribs. The shock as his boot made contact travelled all the way up his body and reverberated inside his brain.
Brooke turned on him. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What do I think I’m doing? You just risked four men’s lives for a corpse.’
‘Orders. We were ordered to get him back and we did.’ He glanced at the other stretcher-bearers and lowered his voice. ‘Look, I know you’re having a rough time but it’s no easier for the rest of us.’
Pointless saying anything. Anyway, all he wanted to do was sleep. The others were hunkered down against a wall, their hands hanging between their knees.
‘Right,’ Brooke said. ‘I want you to go across to C Company. They could do with a bit of help.’
He was gone before anybody could speak. Boiler began swearing steadily, inventively, under his breath. He was a great big bully-boy on the surface, but too used to doing what his betters told him to really protest. Not Neville. He pushed through the crowd into the back room, the operating theatre, if you could call it that. The low ceiling was hung with lamps, and despite the stench of blood, the place had a curious seedy glamour about it, halfway between a nightclub and an abattoir. Brooke was scrubbing his hands while two orderlies heaved a bleeding lump of meat on to the table.
‘Captain Brooke, sir.’
He was always correct, even formal, in front of the others. Brooke wiped his face on his sleeve, looking at Neville with smears of blood around his eyes.
‘You can’t just lend them out like that. They’re absolutely bloody knackered. Look at Wilkie, he’s dead on his feet.’
‘That was an order.’
They stared at each other. For a moment the prospect of head-on collision loomed, then Neville turned on his heel and went back into the other room. ‘Come on, lads.’ He dragged Wilkie to his feet, pushed the gas curtain aside and went out into the night.
Somewhere a tenor voice was singing: They didn’t believe me, they didn’t believe me …
Well, no, Neville thought, struggling to sit
up in bed. Who the fuck would?
He could kill for a cigarette. Instead, he lay with his eyes closed, his mind ranging back through the furthest reaches of his dream. Lending them to another company when they were on their knees with exhaustion. Even now, looking back, he didn’t believe it.
That was the moment, he thought. After that, Brooke was the enemy.
Gillies settled one buttock on the edge of his bed. ‘You’re looking a lot better.’
‘Oh. Grown back, has it?’
‘Now then.’
Why did everybody in this fucking hospital talk to you as if you were three years old? ‘I just need to get out of this place. It’s driving me insane.’
‘You are allowed out, you know. It’s not a prison.’
‘Could I go into London?’
‘I’d try a walk round the grounds first.’
‘And the operation?’
‘Well, that was a very nasty infection you had. I’m afraid the first thing I’m going to have to do is remove the pedicle …’
‘Remove it?’
‘It hasn’t taken. In fact it’ll slough off by itself in a few days –’
‘You mean, you have to start again?’
‘Afraid so. Things might look a bit worse initially …’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’
‘Ah, well.’
After Gillies had gone, Neville sat looking round the ward, from face to face to face. Once, he and Brooke had watched some young officers, newly arrived from England, using beetroots on poles for target practice. Shouts of ‘Howzat?’ when somebody smashed the beetroot head to pieces. ‘Idiots,’ he’d said. But Brooke shook his head. ‘Don’t be too hard on them. They’ll learn, soon enough.’
Suddenly Neville pushed back the bedclothes and swung his feet on to the floor. When he first tried to stand he went dizzy and toppled back on to the bed. Getting dressed took the best part of an hour, but he managed it at last.
Staggering down the ward, he encountered his nemesis, Sister Lang-widge!. Wasn’t really called that, of course, but so far he’d managed not to learn her name.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Mr Neville?’
‘Mr Gillies says I have to have fresh air.’
And besides, you fucking ugly cow, he mouthed at her retreating back, I need a cigarette.
Twenty-two
They’re letting me out, Neville’s note had said:
Just for one evening but it’s a start. There’s nobody I would rather spend my first evening of freedom with than you, my dear fellow. So, if you’re agreeable, I could pick you up from the Slade this Thursday at half past six. I believe you still work office hours? Of course if you’d prefer not to be seen with me, I shall quite understand …
Since when had he been Neville’s ‘dear fellow’? Neville must have many friends closer than Paul whom he could have arranged to meet, but there again, perhaps not. His capacity for offending people was legendary. And he’d chosen to have no visitors.
Refusing to be niggled by that sly dig about office hours, Paul finished work precisely at six, cleaned himself up and changed into the uniform he’d brought with him. Even with a stick and a limp it wasn’t wise to be seen on the streets in civilian dress. He wasn’t much looking forward to the evening, but it was the kind – the decent – thing to keep Neville company on his first venture into London. They’d find some back room in a pub somewhere and talk, he supposed, about painting. Now that Neville had been commissioned as a war artist, painting was, once again, a safe topic. And then, duty done, he could pour Neville on to the Sidcup train, and go home.
Neville was waiting near the reception desk. He was not in uniform, which surprised Paul a little, until he reflected that Neville had his face to vouch for him. Standing there in the shadows, like that, he became a figure of menace. Paul wished he would move, look round, say something, and yet, as Neville turned towards him, he had to brace himself for his second sight of that face.
Nothing. That was the first impression. A featureless, silvery oval hovering in the half-darkness, as if a deranged, wandering moon had somehow strayed into the building. Then he understood: Neville was wearing a mask.
‘My God.’
‘Yes, my son?’ Neville came across and shook hands. ‘Oh, come on, Tarrant, how often do you say that and get an answer?’
‘I’m sorry, it’s … a bit of a shock.’
Paul was still struggling to take it in. The mask was beautifully made, expressionless, of course, except for a faint, archaic smile. It reminded him of a kouros, except that they had no individuality, and this most definitely did, though it wasn’t a portrait of Neville as he’d once been.
‘I borrowed it,’ Neville said. ‘It’s not mine.’
‘Well. I’m impressed.’
‘So you should be. It’s an original Ward Muir.’ He might have been explaining the provenance of some recently acquired painting. ‘Chap it belongs to – well, no face at all, basically; I don’t think even Gillies could do much for him. So off he went to the tin-noses department. The last resort.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Bloody should be, it’s Rupert Brooke.’
God, yes, so it was. Now he’d been told, it was obvious.
‘Very popular, apparently. The Rupert Brooke.’
‘But why? Why would you want to look like somebody else?’
Neville shrugged. ‘Why not? Why not aim for something better? You’ve got to admit he was absolutely stunning.’
‘I’m afraid I never met him.’
‘No, I suppose not …’
It was hard to relate to Neville wearing that thing. And though it hid the ruin of the face it also directed the imagination towards it. Paul struggled to find something sufficiently neutral to say. ‘Is it comfortable?’
‘Not really. Fact, if you had to wear it all the time it would be absolutely bloody intolerable.’ The eyeholes turned towards him. ‘And if you try to see it from a woman’s point of view, what would be the point of kissing this?’
Too raw, too intimate. ‘I don’t know.’
‘No bloody point at all. Better the gargoyle underneath. Well, I’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’
His voice was shaking with anger and pain. Suddenly, Paul realized that behind the mask anything was possible: Neville could say – and quite possibly do – anything. Immediately, Paul’s nervousness about the evening increased; he compensated by trying to get the conversation back on to more mundane topics. ‘How do you drink through it?’
‘Straw.’ Neville produced one from his inside pocket. ‘Bet you’ve never drunk whisky through a straw, have you?’
‘No, I don’t believe I have.’
They walked to the Rose and Crown and sat in the back room, attracting sidelong glances, though Neville kept his hat on and pulled the scarf well up to his chin. As he drank, snuffles and slobbering came from behind the mask, but it certainly didn’t impede his intake: whisky was running up the straw like lemonade on a hot day.
‘Hey, take it easy. We’ve got all night.’
‘I have absolutely no bloody fucking intention whatsobloodyever of “taking it easy”. A brass monkey would drink if it had my life.’
A moment later, though, he settled back into his chair and looked around the room. Nobody returned his gaze.
‘I’ve been meaning to congratulate you,’ Paul said.
‘What on, exactly?’
‘Becoming a war artist.’
‘Been one for years. Didn’t need a bloody government committee to …’
‘Will you be able to paint?’
‘Not if I stay in that dump, no. I could if they let me out.’
Another brooding silence. Paul said, quickly, ‘Elinor says she went to see you.’
‘So I believe. Mother said she’d been, but I don’t remember. Probably talked a whole load of bloody rubbish …’
Paul felt his tension through the mas
k. ‘She said you were talking about something precious, but she couldn’t make out what it was.’
‘ “Precious”?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, wait a minute, yes, the Padre was Precious. I mean, his name was Precious. He certainly wasn’t – perfectly dreadful little man. Brooke hated him. And for once Brooke was right.’
‘Why?’
‘Why did he hate him? Oh, I don’t know, they kept having stupid arguments. About – well, one of the things was books.We had a stock of books we used to hand out to the men. You know, penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, that kind of thing, nothing that would raise an eyebrow really. But oh, my God, you should have heard Precious on the subject, you’d have thought we were passing round dirty postcards. And then there was syphilis. “The Bad Disorder”, Precious insisted on calling it. He thought the solution was for the men to find Jesus, tie a knot in it, basically. Brooke thought the answer was this stuff you were supposed to paint on your willy if you’d been a naughty boy. Dyed it bright blue.’ He put his glass down. ‘Not much of a choice really, is it? Bible-thumping or a blue dick.’
‘And Brooke … couldn’t leave it alone?’
‘Brooke couldn’t leave anything alone.’
He was looking towards the bar as he spoke. Paul drained his glass. ‘Do you want another or shall we move on?’
‘Move on, for God’s sake, let’s get out of here.’
Standing up, Neville knocked over a chair and set it clumsily to rights. Paul heard him breathing heavily as they walked across the room. As they reached the door, an old man with muculent blue eyes stood up and solemnly shook Neville’s hand. As if this had been a prearranged signal, a ripple of applause spread around the room.
‘Christ, that was embarrassing,’ Neville said, as the door swung shut behind them.
‘People want to show their respect, that’s all.’
‘No, they don’t, they want us out of sight. You should hear Gillies on the subject. And Tonks. When they were in Aldershot there used to be a weekly parade, patients in uniform, brass band, flags, whole bloody works … It was supposed to give a grateful nation the chance to say thank you. Three bars of “Tipperary” and the streets were empty.’