Regeneration (13 page)

There were other reasons too why he didn’t want to talk about the war. Inevitably such talk would have strengthened his own doubts, and they were bad enough already. He even dreamt about the bloody war, not just nightmares, he was used to those; he’d dreamt he was speaking at a debate on whether it should go on or not. In his dream he’d spoken in favour of continuing to the point of German collapse, but Rivers’s analysis had left him in no doubt as to how far his horror at the whole business went. He felt safe with Rivers, because he knew Rivers shared the horror, and shared too the conviction that, in spite of everything, it had to go on.

‘I don’t know whether to spend that half-crown or frame it,’ Sassoon was saying. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever win another.’

That was to make Anderson feel better about losing his temper on the course. Sassoon was a pleasant companion, there was no doubt about that. He was friendly, modest. But the Declaration hadn’t been modest. What had chiefly struck Anderson about that was its arrogance, its totally outrageous assumption that everybody who disagreed with him was ‘callous’. Do you think I’m callous? he wanted to ask. Do you think
Rivers
is callous? But there was no point getting worked up. Rivers would soon sort him out.

‘I shan’t be seeing you tomorrow, shall I?’ Sassoon was saying. ‘Your wife’s coming up.’

‘No, I’m afraid she’s had to cancel. So it’s business as usual.’ He took Sassoon’s empty glass and stood up. ‘You can
try
to make it five bob, if you like.’

Prior watched the amber lights winking in his beer. He was sitting in the shadowy comer of a pub in some sleazy district of Edinburgh. He didn’t know where he was. He’d walked miles that evening, not admitting even to himself what he was looking for, and gradually the winding, insidious streets had led him
deeper and deeper into a neighbourhood where washing hung, grey-white, from stacked balconies, and the smell of steak frying reminded him of home.

Remembering the smell, his stomach rumbled. He’d had nothing to eat all evening, except a packet of peanuts. Crumbs of salt still clung to his lips, stinging the cracks where the skin had dried during his asthma attack. It was worth it, though, just to sit quietly, to listen to voices that didn’t stammer, to have his eyes freed from the ache of khaki.

No theory.
He’d lied to Rivers about that. It was a point of honour with him to lie to Rivers at least once during every meeting. He drained his glass and went out into the night.

A little way down the street was a café. He’d passed it on his way to the pub and been tempted to go in, but the door had opened and the breath of hot, damp, dirty, dishwater-smelling air had decided him against it. Now, though, he was too hungry to care. He went in, noticing how the inner windows dripped from condensation, how the damp air insinuated itself into the spaces between his uniform and his skin. A short silence fell. Nobody in an officer’s uniform was likely to be inconspicuous or welcome here. He would eat something, fish and chips, quickly and then go.

A group of women was sitting at the next table. Three of them were young, one older, thirty-five, forty perhaps, with blackened stumps for teeth. As far as he could make out from the conversation her name was Lizzie, and the others were Madge, the blonde, pretty one, Betty, who was dark and thin, and Sarah, who had her back to him. Since they all had a slightly yellow tinge to their skin, he assumed they were munitions workers. Munition
ettes,
as the newspapers liked to call them. Lizzie was keeping the younger girls entertained with a string of stories.

‘There’s this lass and she’s a bit simple and she lived next door to a pro – well you know what a pro is.’ Lizzie glanced at him and lowered her voice. ‘So she’s standing at the door this day, and the pro’s coming up the street, you know,
dressed to death.
So she says, “Eeh,” she says, “you’re always lovely dressed.” She says, “You’ve got beautiful clothes.” And she says, “I
love
your hats.” So the pro says, “Well, why don’t you
get yourself down the town like I do?” She says, “If a man winks at you, wink back and go with him and let him have what he wants and charge him 7/6. And go to R&K Modes and get yourself a hat.” So the next day the pro’s coming up the street again. “Hello.” “Hello.” She says, “D’ y’
get
a hat?” She says,
“Nah.”
“Well, did you not do as I telled you?” She says, “Why of course I did.” She says, “I went down the town and there was a man winked at us and I winked back. He says, ‘Howay over the Moor.’” So she says, “I gans over the Moor with him,” she says, “and I let him have what he wanted. He says, ‘How much is that?’ I says, ‘7/6.’ He says, ‘Hadaway and shite,’ and when I come back he’d gone.”’

The girls shrieked with laughter. He looked at them again. The one called Madge was very pretty, but there was no hope of winkling her out of the group, and he thought he might as well be moving on. As soon as his meal arrived, he began stuffing limp chips and thickly battered fish into his mouth, wiping the grease away on the back of his hand.

‘You’ll get hiccups.’

He looked up. It was Sarah, the one who’d been sitting with her back to him. ‘You’ll have to give us a surprise, then, won’t you?’

‘Drop me key down your back if you like.’

‘That’s nose bleeds, Sarah,’ Betty said.

‘She knows what it is,’ said Lizzie.

Madge said, ‘Hiccups, you’re supposed to drink from the other side of the cup.’

She and Prior stared at each other across the table.

‘But it’s a con, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You can’t do it.’

‘’Course you can.’

‘Go on, then, let’s see you.’

She dipped her small, straight nose into her cup, lapped, spluttered and came up laughing and wiping her chin. Betty, obviously jealous, gave her a dig in the ribs. ‘Hey up you, you’re gonna gerrus slung out.’

The café owner was eyeing them from behind the till, slowly polishing a glass on a distinctly grubby-looking tea towel. The girls went back to their tea, bursting into minor explosions of giggles, their shoulders shaking, while Prior turned back and
finished his meal. He was aware of Sarah beside him. She had very heavy, very thick, dark-brown hair, but all over the surface, in a kind of halo, were other hairs, auburn, copper, chestnut. He’d never seen hair like that before. He looked at her, and she turned around and stared at him, a cool, amused stare from greenish eyes. He said, ‘Would you like a drink?’

She looked at her cup.

‘No, I meant a proper drink.’

‘Pubs round here don’t let women in.’

‘Isn’t there a hotel?’

‘Well, there’s the Cumberland, but…’

The other women looked at each other. Lizzie said, ‘Howay, lasses, I think our Sarah’s clicked.’

The three of them got up, said a good-natured ‘goodnight’ and tripped out of the café, only bursting into giggles again after they’d reached the pavement.

‘Shall we go, then?’ said Prior.

Sarah looked at him. ‘Aye, all right.’

Outside, she turned to him. ‘I still don’t know your name.’

‘Prior,’ he said automatically.

She burst out laughing. ‘Don’t you lot
have
Christian names?’

‘Billy.’ He wanted to say, and I’m not ‘you lot’.

‘Mine’s Sarah. Sarah Lumb.’ She held out her hand to him in a direct, almost boyish way. It intrigued him, since nothing else about her was boyish.

‘Well, Sarah Lumb, lead on.’

Her preferred drink was port and lemon. Prior was startled at the rate she knocked them back. A flush spread across her cheeks in a different place from the rouge, so that she looked as if her face had slid out of focus. She worked in a factory, she said, making detonators. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, but she liked the work, she said, and it was well paid. ‘Fifty bob a week.’

‘I suppose that’s something.’

‘Too bloody right it is. I was earning ten bob before the war.’

He thought what the detonators she made could do to flesh and bone, and his mind bulged as a memory threatened to surface. ‘You’re not Scottish, though, are you?’

‘No, Geordie. Weil, what
you’d
call Geordie.’

‘Did your dad come up looking for work?’

‘No, they’re still down there. I’m in lodgings down the road.’

Ab
, he thought.

‘
“Ah,”
he thinks.’ She looked at him, amused and direct. ‘I think you’re a bad lad.’

‘No, I’m not. Nobody bad could be
that
transparent.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Haven’t you got a boyfriend?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think you’d be sitting here if you had.’

‘Oh, I might be one of these two-timing lasses, you never know.’ She looked down into her glass. ‘No, I haven’t got one.’

‘Why not? Can’t all be blind in Scotland.’

‘Perhaps I’m not on the market.’

He didn’t know what to make of her, but then he was out of touch with women. They seemed to have changed so much during the war, to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same period had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space.

‘I did have one,’ she said. ‘Loos.’

Odd, he thought, getting up and going to the bar to buy more drinks, that one word should be enough. But then why not? Language ran out on you, in the end, the names were left to say it all. Mons, Loos, Ypres, the Somme. Arras. He paid and carried the drinks back to their table. He thought that he didn’t want to hear about the boyfriend, and that he was probably going to anyway. He was right there.

‘I was in service at the time. It didn’t…’ Her voice became very brisk. ‘It didn’t seem to sink in. Then his mate came to see me. You weren’t supposed to have followers. “Followers” – that’s how old-fashioned she was. Especially
soldiers.
“Oh my
deah.
” So anyway he come to the front door and…’ She waved her hand languidly. ‘I sent him away. Then I nipped down the basement and let him in the back.’ She took a swig of the port. ‘It was
our
gas,’ she said, red-lidded. ‘Did
you
know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Our own bloody gas. After he’d gone, you know, I couldn’t believe it. I just walked round and round the table and it was
like… You know when you get a tune stuck in your head? I just kept on thinking, our gas. Anyway after a bit she come downstairs, and she says, “Where’s tea?” I says, “Well, you can see for yourself. It’s not ready.”
We-ell.
First one thing was said and then another and in the end I did, I let her have it. She says, “You’d be making a great mistake to throw this job away, you know, Sarah.” I says, “Oh, aye?” She says, “We don’t say ‘aye’, Sarah, we say ‘yes’.” I says, “All right,” I says, “‘
yes
’. But ‘aye’ or ‘yes’, it’s still ten bob a week and you put it where the monkey put the nuts.” Same night I was packing me bags. No testimonial. And you know what that would’ve meant before the war?’ She looked him up and down. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do. Anyway, I turned up at home and me Mam says, “I’ve no sympathy, our Sarah,” she says. “You should have fixed him while you had the chance,” she says. “And made sure of the pension. Our Cynthia had her wits about her,” she says. “Why couldn’t you?” And of course our Cynthia’s sat there. Would you believe
in weeds?
I thought, aw to hell with this. Anyway, a couple of days after, I got on talking to Betty – that’s the dark girl you saw me with just now – and we decided to give this a go.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

She brooded for a while over her empty glass. ‘You know, me Mam says there’s no such thing as love between men and women. Love for your bairns, yes. Love for a man?
No.
’ She turned to him, almost aggressively. ‘What do
you
think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, that makes two of us, then, ‘cause I’m buggered if I do.’

‘But you loved –’

‘Johnny? I can’t remember what he looked like. Sometimes his face pops into me mind, like when I’m thinking about something else, but when I
want
to see it, I can’t.’ She smiled. ‘That’s the trouble with port and lemon, isn’t it? Truth pours out.’

He took the hint and bought another.

By the time they left the pub she’d drunk enough to need his arm.

‘Which way’s your lodgings?’

She giggled. ‘Won’t do you any good,’ she said. ‘My landlady’s a dragon. Fifty times worse than me Mam.’

‘Shall we go for a walk, then? I don’t fancy saying goodnight, just yet, do you?’

‘All right.’

They turned away from the lighted pavements, into the darkness of a side street. He put his arm around her, inching his hand further up until his fingers rested against the curve of her breast. She was tall for a woman, and they fitted together, shoulder and hip. He hardly had to shorten his stride. As they walked, she glanced down frequently at her shoes and stockings, admiring herself. He guessed she more usually wore boots.

They came upon a church with a small churchyard around it. Gravestones leant together at angles in the shadow of the trees, like people gossiping. ‘Shall we go in there for a bit?’

He opened the gate for her and they went in, into the darkness under the trees, treading on something soft and crunchy. Pine needles, perhaps. At the church door they turned and followed the path round, till they came to a tall, crumbling, ivy-covered wall. There, in the shadows, he pulled her towards him. He got her jacket and blouse unbuttoned and felt for her breast. The nipple hardened against his palm, and he laughed under his breath. She started to say something, but he covered her mouth with his own, he didn’t want her to talk, he didn’t want her to tell him things. He would have preferred not even to know her name. Just flesh against flesh in the darkness and then nothing.

‘I know what
you
want,’ she said, pulling away from him.

Instantly he let her go. ‘
I
know what I want. What’s wrong with
that?
I’ve never forced anybody.’ He turned away from her and sat on a tombstone. ‘And I don’t go on about it either.’