Tonks went in with me and stayed close the whole time. The first three operations were nose repairs. I don’t know whether that’s typical, I forgot to ask. Tonks has developed a standard system for recording nose operations, so provided I follow that I can’t go wrong. Well, that’s the theory, anyway.
I didn’t find it as hard as I thought I might. You’re not actually drawing; it’s more a question of taking notes. I had a few horrible minutes when my mind went completely blank, but after that I was all right. In fact, by the end of the morning I was almost euphoric because I hadn’t passed out, or done something else equally stupid. I hadn’t let Tonks down. That was what kept me going, really, the fear of letting Tonks down. I suppose beforehand I’d been dreading the sights, but I didn’t mind that so much, because I was so fascinated by the process. But the smells made me feel sick, after a while.
And then, just as we were starting to think about lunch, another patient was wheeled in, added to the list at the last minute. Tonks didn’t know; I’m sure he didn’t, he’d have warned me. Kit. I couldn’t see his face, it was his voice I recognized. I went across and looked down at him and his eyes widened. He seemed really startled, I couldn’t think why till I remembered the mask I was wearing, and of course he wouldn’t be expecting to see me there, anyway. But it was a nasty moment.
2 December 1917
Catherine and I don’t get on as well as we used to do and in a flat this size that really matters.
Of course it’s not bad all the time. Sometimes in the evening when we’re sitting by the fire in our nightgowns it’s exactly the way it used to be. But we talk too much about old times. We’re living off the past because, in the present, there are just too many things that can’t be mentioned. I think she’s attracted to Paul, I know he’s attracted to her, and I can’t work out what I feel about it. A few weeks ago I’d have said it wouldn’t matter if Paul found somebody else. Now, I’m not so sure. For one thing, I never thought the ‘somebody else’ would be my best friend. And part of me thinks he’s attracted to her for that very reason. He almost said as much.
They’d suit each other, probably. Paul needs somebody who’ll put his work first, deal with the domestic side so he doesn’t have to think about it, believe in his talent, forget about her own. Catherine’s got talent, but she’s not ambitious. She’d slot into that role perfectly well – and it’d kill me. I don’t blame Paul for wanting it. I know if somebody offered me that kind of support I’d jump at it, but I don’t think women are offered it, not very often anyway.
So I go round and round in circles. A lot of this is because I’m not painting. I’m never any good when I’m not painting, but you need some stability to be able to do it, and I haven’t got that. Probably I should just focus on finding a place of my own. Forget everything else.
Twenty-five
You had to lie on a stretcher to be taken to the operating theatre. He hated that: the helplessness. Why not let him walk while he still could? But no, you had to be turned into an object to be fetched and carried because that helped the people who were going to slice into you. He lay, fuming, staring at the ceiling of the hut, shut off from the voices around him. ‘Good luck,’ somebody called out. He raised his hand in acknowledgement, but didn’t turn his head.
Outside, a brisk wind blew a mist of fine rain on to exposed areas of skin. They trundled him along, wheels squeaking and hissing on the wet walkway. Familiar smells of creosote and starched linen. A nurse, her face screwed up against the rain, marched along beside him, sensible shoes clumping on the boards.
Boots thump-thumping on duckboards, the misery of wet clothes. If he closed his eyes, he might be back there. What a luxury a wheeled stretcher would have been … By the time they’d finished carrying the wounded back he’d felt as though his arms had been wrenched out of their sockets; he was trailing his knuckles along the ground like a baboon. The nurse’s hair was stringy with wet. He raised his hand to his face and touched a crater that no amount of rainwater would fill.
A blast of heat as the swing doors burst open. Bright light, his eyes hurt, he’s afraid now, horribly afraid, then Gillies’s eyes above the mask, crinkled at the corners, he must be smiling. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s all right.’ A long struggle to get the ether tube down his throat, he’s choking, gagging. It’s Brooke’s eyes now above the mask. Enormous eyes, that curious pale translucent blue, Elinor’s eyes. It could be Elinor standing there. But it’s Brooke’s voice he hears. ‘You did this to yourself, didn’t you?’
Gillies’s face, not smiling now.
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, DIDN’T YOU?
‘No,’ he tries to say. ‘No, I didn’t.’
But the words gurgle down a plughole and all of him flows after.
For one mad moment he’d thought Brooke was talking to him.
‘You did this to yourself, didn’t you?’
Not a trace of compassion. But he couldn’t dose this lad on laxatives and send him back. His left arm was shattered, with splinters of bone sticking through the mangled flesh.
‘You may as well tell me, I know anyway.’
How did he know? Oh, yes, of course. Burn marks round the bullet-hole. Unless there’d been a German in the funk-hole with him, this had to be a self-inflicted wound.
The boy was – how old? Seventeen? His teeth were chattering with shock, he could barely speak. ‘Can’t stand it, it’s no use going on at me, I can’t, I can’t …’
Brooke turned away. ‘Give him some rum, for God’s sake.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Cut the burn out, of course.’ He caught Neville’s expression. ‘What else can I do? Can’t let the miserable little bugger get shot.’
They worked alone: the fewer people who knew about this the better. Technically, Brooke was aiding and abetting a deserter; he could get into a lot of trouble for this. When the pain got too bad, Neville held the boy down, stuffed a roll of bandages into his mouth, ended up with one knee on his chest. Brooke scraped and scooped the burnt flesh from around the wound, poured iodine into the hole, and applied a dressing.
‘Right, that should do it.’
The boy was crying for his mother. The whimpering grated on Neville’s nerves. ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up, you should be bloody grateful.’
Brooke turned away. ‘You might like some rum yourself,’ he said, over his shoulder, as he started to scrub his hands.
Was that a reference to the state of Neville’s nerves? It couldn’t have escaped Brooke’s notice that he jumped and flinched at the sound of every shell or that he’d developed a persistent tremor that made him almost useless as a dresser. He spent more time now as a stretcher-bearer in the front line than in the Casualty Clearing Station behind it.
That night, Neville lay on his bunk, exhausted, but too tense to sleep. He kept thinking about the boy who’d put a rifle against his arm at point-blank range, and fired. Not the easiest thing to do with a rifle … Unless, of course, he’d managed to get his hands on a revolver. And Brooke: so callous, so unfeeling, on the surface, and yet prepared to take that risk. It only needed the boy to start blabbing – and he might easily do it too.
Where was Brooke? The bunk opposite was empty, as it often was around this time. Boiler and Hen Man were snoring and muttering in their sleep. Evans was in the next room, not asleep yet, reading, and Wilkie was along the corridor, on night duty, tending to a burly Scotsman who had pneumonia and wasn’t responding to treatment. So where was Brooke?
He might have walked up into the front line. He often did that, couldn’t seem to keep away from the place. He’d spend a couple of hours talking to the men, spotting the ones who were struggling with illness but wouldn’t give in till they collapsed. Sometimes a couple of days’ rest was all it took to keep a man in the line. Take more than that to keep me in it, Neville thought, as he drifted off to sleep.
He was jerked awake by somebody saying, ‘Right then. Let’s get him on the
stretcher.’
Wounded coming in. Get up, get up …
‘Calm down, we’re just taking you back to the ward.’
A burst of shellfire close at hand. Every object on the table jumped; the bunk underneath him shook. He put up a hand to his face … Something seemed to be sticking out of it.
‘Naughty, naughty.’ He felt the back of his hand being slapped. ‘You mustn’t touch that.’
My God, Nanny Barnes. How did she get in?
He was being wheeled along; either that or the bunk was floating. When he opened his eyes, he saw Brooke, sitting beside the table in shirt and braces, taking his boots off. He sat for a moment, wiggling his toes, revelling, as they all did behind the lines, in the sheer pleasure of being able to take his boots off. In the next room the gramophone had started playing. Evans was beyond a bloody joke: same bloody song over and over.
And when I told them how beautiful you are,
They didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me.
Briefly, Neville registered that he was back in the hut with the screens round his bed. The noises of the daytime ward were muffled, except for the wretched gramophone that cut through everything.
Your lips, your eyes, your cheeks, your hair,
Are in a class beyond compare.
Tossing and turning on his chicken-wire bunk, Neville fell into a deep, but far from dreamless, sleep. He woke with a cry, afraid that he might have been heard, and the nature of the cry recognized. His eyes fell on Brooke’s sleeping face. So he was back, but where had he been?
And the dream … My God, whatever next? But it was only because Brooke looked so much like Elinor. It had been Elinor, really, in the dream.
He woke again to find Gillies perched on the side of his bed.
‘Well, that went well,’ he said.
‘Did it?’ He was tied to the bed again. In his sleep, when he’d struggled, the leather straps had cut into his wrists. ‘When can I get my hands free?’
‘Today, I’ll do it for you now, if you like. But you’ll have to put them on again tonight.’ He was unbuckling the straps as he spoke. ‘We daren’t risk another infection.’
‘And when can I go out? I’ve got to paint.’
‘I’m sure we can find you a room …’
‘No, not here. I can’t –’
‘Tonks mentioned it, actually. I’ll see what I can do.’
After Gillies had gone, Neville rubbed his wrists and stared round the ward. Every time, it was like returning from the dead. An orderly, pushing a squeaking trolley, was dispensing tea: two slices of grey bread and a blob of plum-and-apple jam. His mouth flooded with saliva: he was famished. He could hardly wait for the food to get to him. And what was more, what was better than anything, he was going to get out of here.
Even at night, with the restraints back on his wrists and a bitter-tasting sleeping draught winding its way through his veins, he still felt the same fierce joy. It was almost indistinguishable from anger. The night nurse sat at her table in an island of light. Snuffles, snores, creaks, groans: the usual cattle noises, but at least the gramophone was quiet. Though that blasted song followed him into sleep.
And when they ask us, how dangerous it was,
Oh, we’ll never tell them, no, we’ll never tell them …
Lying in his bunk, listening to the flickering rumble of the guns – very close they sounded tonight – Neville couldn’t stop thinking about the boy who’d shot himself. It was becoming an obsession. How desperate he must have been to do that.
A few nights later, back in the line, they went out to bring in a wounded officer and while the others were lining up the stretcher Neville slipped his hand into the officer’s holster and pulled out the revolver. Nobody saw him do it. He slipped the revolver inside his tunic, feeling the metal cold against his skin. He’d taken it without forethought, almost without volition, and he was briefly tempted to put it back, but he didn’t. By the time they got back to the British lines, the revolver had become a warm bulge against his side, part of him, almost, and yet still foreign. Like a tumour.
He didn’t know where to put the bloody thing. In the end he just pushed it into a sock and shoved it down to the bottom of his kitbag. He told himself he wouldn’t think about it again. Only he did, all the time. It lay heavy on his mind and, especially on night duty, when there wasn’t enough going on to distract him, it throbbed and ached like an infected wound.
But then, suddenly, it didn’t matter. They were being pulled out of the line, going back far beyond the reach of shells, to prepare for the big attack, the one that everybody knew was coming. But you could forget about that, as you marched away from the trenches into open country where birds still sang and there were flowers, trees, streams … Even as far back as this, some of the buildings had holes in their roofs and there were craters in the fields, but soon they’d leave all that behind. There’d be villages where no bombs had fallen, cafés, food that didn’t come out of a tin, drink. My God, yes, drink.
Increasingly, he needed a drink to take the edge off his fear. With one part of his mind he could, quite objectively, analyse his condition because he’d seen it so often before, in other men. You began by being appropriately, rationally afraid, the extent of the fear always proportionate to the danger. With luck, and a sound constitution, that stage might last for many months. But the process of erosion is unrelenting. After repeated episodes of overwhelming fear, you start to become punch-drunk. You take stupid risks, and sometimes you get away with it, but not for very long. If you’re lucky you may be wounded, but don’t count on it. If you’re not, the third stage is just round the corner. Fear is omnipresent. Sitting in a café, with a beer in front of you, you’re neither more nor less afraid than you are in the front line. Fear has become a constant companion; you can’t remember what it’s like not to be afraid. He was at that stage now.
And the next? Breakdown: stammering, forgetting how to do even the simplest things, shaking, shitty breeches … Oh, he’d seen it. And he knew it wasn’t far away.
As stretcher-bearers and orderlies they played little direct part in the rehearsals for the coming attack. Brooke held a sick parade at six o’clock every morning, dispensed laxatives, listened to chests, attended to blistered feet. One man, a tall, yellow-skinned, cadaverous sort of chap, older than the rest, became really quite ill with a septic throat. How did you get that? Neville wanted to ask. If he’d thought it was contagious he’d have climbed into bed on top of the chap and gone through the whole Kiss me, Hardy routine, though he probably wouldn’t have got it, no matter how hard he tried. Beyond the usual coughs and sniffles, he couldn’t get anything.
Many of the soldiers were young recruits fresh from home. They had no knowledge of the men whose places they were taking in the line, very little idea of what lay ahead, and the others, those who knew, who remembered names and faces, were silent.
When not actually rehearsing for the attack they played a lot of football. Neville’s bulk and laboured breathing kept him off the pitch, though he liked watching. Rain pelted down; the men’s shirts stuck to their backs and their mouths were wet and red in muddy faces. He remembered the same men as they’d been ten days ago: pinched, grey faces, stumbling along, many of them half asleep. They’d been old men, then. And the smell: that evil yellow stench of a battalion coming out of the line. And look at them now. Yes, but in a few days they’d be back in the line, and this time, everybody said, this time they’d really be in the thick of it. Of course rumours were always flying round, but he thought there was some truth in this one. You could tell from the jumping-off points in the rehearsals that they were going to bear the brunt of it.
All this time, whether drunk or sober, Neville was aware of the revolver lying at the bottom of his kitbag. Knowing it was there both disturbed and comforted him. Two days before they were due to start the long march away from safety, he went and sat by himself in the barn where the men slept at night and took it out of its wrapping. Ha
rdly knowing what he was doing, he put the muzzle against the skin of his bare arm, trying to imagine what it would be like to squeeze the trigger: the agony of torn muscles and shattered bone.
An act of cowardice, people said. And he didn’t dare do it. So what did that make him? His fingers as they stroked the cold metal left prints that quickly faded. If only he could get wounded, a slight wound, nothing too serious, just enough to make sure he got sent home.
An illness would do. Trench fever: that was a good one. Oh, for God’s sake, he didn’t need to get ill, he was ill. He’d had rheumatic fever as a child; there’d been a question mark over his heart ever since. He’d been excused rugby for a whole year. And the symptoms he’d been experiencing recently: racing pulse, indigestion – ah yes, but was it indigestion? Skipped beats … His heart skipped so many beats it was a wonder the bugger kept going at all. Even now, this minute, he could feel his heart thudding: skipping beats, every vein in his body pulsing and throbbing, as if he’d suddenly become transparent. Honest to God, if he stripped to the waist now, you’d be able to see it beating. Nobody could say that was normal …
Brooke was the problem. Why couldn’t he stay in the Casualty Clearing Station like every other MO and wait for the wounded to be brought to him? There’d be no disgrace in that, none whatsoever. In fact, it was the way the system was meant to work. But no, Brooke had to be in the front line, or preferably in front of it, crawling around on his belly in the dark. Sometimes, after the wounded and dead had been brought in, he’d go out again, searching for identity discs. Anything, he said, to bring down the terribly long list of ‘Missing, Believed Killed’. How could people grieve, he said, when they didn’t know? And Neville had to go with him; there was no choice. That was the crux of it, really: Brooke had a choice; he didn’t. He was ordered to go, and so he went, crawling about in bright moonlight over what felt like the eyeball of the world, searching through a mess of decomposing body parts to find the little scraps of metal.