Regeneration (17 page)

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Rivers said, coming up behind him. ‘I meant to be here when you arrived.’

‘That’s all right. These old codgers’ve been keeping me amused.’ He glanced round quickly. ‘I mean the ones on the wall.’

‘It is rather a geriatric gathering, isn’t it?’ Rivers sat down. ‘Would you like a drink?’ He raised his arm and a white-jacketed, elderly waiter came tottering across. ‘Gin and tonic for me, I think. What’ll you have, Siegfried?’

‘The same, please.’

Rivers’s inspection of the menu was confined to identifying which particular variety of poached fish was currently on offer. Sassoon gave the matter more thought. Rivers watched him as he pored over the menu and thought how much easier his life would have been if they’d sent Siegfried somewhere else. It wasn’t simply the discomfort of having to express views he was no longer sure he held – though, as a scientist, he did find that acutely uncomfortable. No, it was more than that. Every case posed implicit questions about the individual costs of the war, and never more so than in the run up to a round of Medical Boards, when the MOs had to decide which men were fit to return to duty. This would have been easier if he could have believed, as Lewis Yealland, for example, believed, that men who broke down were degenerates whose weakness would have caused them to break down, eventually, even in civilian life, but Rivers could see no evidence of that. The vast majority of his patients had no record of any mental trouble. And as soon as you accepted that the man’s breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than of his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual’s symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him.
Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers’s life had consisted of asking questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be obtained, but there are limits to how many
fundamental
questions you want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn’t end till midnight. All very well for Sassoon.
He
spent
his
days playing golf.

None of this prevented him from watching Sassoon’s continued poring over the menu with affection as well as amusement.

Sassoon looked up. ‘Am I taking too long?’

‘No, take as long as you like.’

‘It’s almost pre-war standard, isn’t it?’

‘I hope you’re not going to protest?’

‘No. You can rely on me to be inconsistent.’

Rivers was not afraid of Sassoon’s noticing any change in
him
. Siegfried’s introversion was remarkable, even by the normal standards of unhappy young men. His love for his men cut through that self-absorption, but Rivers sometimes wondered whether anything else did. And yet he had so many good qualities. It was rare to find a man in whom courage was the
dominating
characteristic, as malice or laziness or greed might be the ruling characteristic of lesser men.

The dining room was almost empty. They were shown to a table for two by a window that overlooked the club’s small, walled garden. A scent of roses, drenched from the morning’s rain, drifted in through the open window.

The waiter was very young, sixteen perhaps. Red hair, big freckles splodged over a pale skin, knobbly, pink-knuckled hand clasping the carving knife. With his other hand he lifted the domed lid from the platter to reveal a joint of very red beef. Sassoon smiled. ‘That looks nice.’

The boy carved three slices. As he bent to get the warmed plate from the shelf below, it was possible to see the nape of his neck, defenceless under the stiff collar.

‘Is that all right, sir?’

‘One more, perhaps?’

The boy was looking at Sassoon with undisguised hero-worship. Not surprisingly, Rivers thought. He’s dragging out the weeks in this dreary job waiting for his turn to go out. At least they no longer allowed boys of his age to
lie
their way in. He noticed Sassoon smiling to himself.

‘What’s amusing you?’

‘I was thinking about Campbell. Not
our
Campbell.
A much
less engaging man, and… er… allegedly sane. He gave lectures – still does, I believe – on “The Spirit of the Bayonet”. You know,
“Stick him in the kidneys, it’ll go in like a hot knife through butter.” “What’s the good of six inches of steel sticking out the back of a man’s neck? Three inches’ll do him. When he croaks, go and find another.”
And so on. And you know, the men sit there laughing and cheering and making obscene gestures.
They hate it.
’ He smiled. ‘I was reminded because that boy was doing so well with the carving knife.’

‘Yes, I noticed.’

‘Very much the sort of man you’d pick as your servant.’

Rivers said mischievously, ‘Not bad-looking either.’

‘I’m afraid that has to take second place. You look for skill with the bayonet first because he’s always on your left in the attack.’

They ate in silence for a while. Rivers said, ‘Have you heard from the friend you were going to write to about Gordon?’

‘Yes. It’s true apparently, he did die instantly. His father said he had, but they don’t always tell parents the truth. I’ve written too many letters like that myself.’

‘It must be some consolation to know he didn’t suffer.’

Sassoon’s expression hardened. ‘I was glad to have it confirmed.’ An awkward silence. ‘I had some more bad news this morning. Do you remember me talking to you about Julian Dadd? Shot in the throat, two brothers killed? Well, his mental state has worsened apparently. He’s in a – what I suppose I ought to call a mental hospital. Given present company. The awful thing is he’s got some crazy idea he didn’t do well enough. Nobody else thinks so, but apparently there’s no arguing with him. He was one of my heroes, you know. I remember
looking at him one evening. We’d just come in from inspecting the men’s billets – which were lousy as usual, and – he cared. He really cared. And I looked at him and I thought,
I want to be like you.
’ He laughed, mocking his hero-worship, but not disowning it. ‘Anyway, I suppose I’ve succeeded, haven’t I? Since we’re both in the loony-bin.’

The provocation was deliberate. When Rivers didn’t rise to it, Sassoon said, ‘It makes it quite difficult to go on, you know. When things like this keep happening to people you know and and… love. To go on with the protest, I mean.’

Silence.

Sassoon leant forward. ‘
Wake up
, Rivers. I thought you’d pounce on that.’

‘Did you?’

A pause. ‘No, I suppose not.’

Rivers dragged his hand down across his eyes. ‘I don’t feel much like pouncing.’

Rivers left the club an hour later. He’d left Siegfried with Ralph Sampson, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, whom they’d bumped into after lunch. At first Sassoon had been almost too overawed to speak, but Sampson had soon put paid to that. Rivers had left him chatting away quite happily. Lunch itself had been rather depressing. At one point Siegfried had said, ‘I’m beginning to feel used up.’ You could understand it. He’d suffered repeated bereavements in the last two years, as first one contemporary then another died. In some ways the experience of these young men paralleled the experience of the very old. They looked back on intense memories and felt lonely because there was nobody left alive who’d been there. That habit of Siegfried’s of looking back, the inability to envisage any kind of future, seemed to be getting worse.

Not an easy case, Rivers thought. Not in the usual sense a case at all. He had no idea what the outcome would be, though he thought he could get Siegfried to give in. His love for his men. The need he had to
prove
his courage. By any
rational
standard, he’d already proved it, over and over again, but then the need wasn’t altogether rational. Given the strength of that need, it was amazing he’d managed to tolerate being cooped up
with ‘wash-outs’ and ‘degenerates’ even as long as he had. Putting those forces together and getting him back to France was a task of approximately the same order of difficulty as flicking a stag beetle on to its back. The trouble was Rivers respected Sassoon too much to manipulate him. He had to be
convinced
that going back was the right thing to do.

At the foot of the Craiglockhart drive, Rivers saw Willard and Mrs Willard. For some extraordinary reason Willard had got his wife to push him as far as the gates, despite the downward slope which he must have seen would make the return journey difficult. Now they were marooned.

Rivers greeted Willard, waited for an introduction to his wife, and, when it failed to come, introduced himself. Mrs Willard was extremely young, attractive in the small-breasted, slim-hipped way of modern girls. As they chatted about the deceptive nature of slopes and the awkwardness of wheelchairs, Rivers became aware of Willard’s hands clenched on the arms of the chair. He felt Willard’s fury at being stranded like this, impotent. Good. The more furious he was the better.

Rivers said to Mrs Willard, ‘Here, I’ll give you a hand.’

With two of them pushing they made steady progress, though there was one nasty moment near the top, when they struck a muddy patch. But then the wheels bit, and they reached level ground at a cracking pace.

‘There you are,’ Mrs Willard said, bending over her husband, breathless and laughing. ‘Made it.’

Willard’s face would have curdled milk.

‘Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ Rivers suggested.

Mrs Willard looked to her husband for guidance. When none came, she said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

‘My door’s on the left as you go in. I’ll just go ahead and arrange things. You’ll be all right now?’

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Willard.

Rivers went into the hall, smiling, only to have the smile wiped off his face by the sight of Matron standing immediately inside the entrance. She’d observed the entire incident and evidently disapproved. ‘You could have sent an orderly down to push the chair, Captain Rivers.’

Rivers opened his mouth, and shut it again. He reminded himself, not for the first time, that it was absolutely necessary for Matron to win some of their battles.

11

__________

Sassoon was trying to decipher a letter from H. G. Wells when Owen knocked on his door.

‘As far as I can make out, he says he’s coming to see Rivers.’

Owen looked suitably impressed. ‘He must be really worried about you.’

‘Oh, it’s not
me
he wants to talk about, it’s his new book.’ Sassoon smiled. ‘You don’t know many writers, do you?’

‘Not many.’

And I, Sassoon thought, am showing off. Which at least was better than moaning about Gordon’s death to somebody who had more than enough problems of his own. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll come. They all talk about it, but in the end it’s just too far. I sometimes wonder whether that’s why they put me here. Whether it was a case of being sent to Rivers or just sent as far away as possible.’

‘Probably Rivers. He gets all the awkward ones.’ Owen stopped in some confusion. ‘Not that you’re –’

‘Oh, I think I count as awkward. By any standard.’ He handed a sheet of paper across. ‘For the
Hydra
.’

‘May I read it?’

‘That’s the general idea.’

Owen read, folded the paper and nodded.

To forestall possible effusions, Sassoon said quickly, ‘I’m not satisfied with the last three lines, but they’ll have to do.’

‘I tried yesterday, but you were out.’

‘I’d be with Rivers.’ He smiled. ‘Do you ever feel like strangling Brock?’

‘No, I get on rather well with him.’

‘I
get on
with Rivers. It’s just… He picked up something I said at lunchtime about not being able to imagine the future. He doesn’t often press, but my God when he does…’

‘Why did he want you to talk about that?’

‘Part of the great campaign to get me back to France. He wants me to put the protest in a longer perspective. You know, “What did you do in the Great War, Siegfried?” Well, I spent three very comfortable years in a loony-bin eating steamed pudding and playing golf. While
other people
– some of them rather close friends – got blown to smithereens. He wants me to admit I won’t be able to bear it. What’s more, he’s probably right.’

‘Think of the poems you could write.’

‘Not war poems.’

Owen’s expression darkened. ‘There are other subjects.’

‘Yes, of course.’

A slightly awkward pause. ‘The trouble is he just knows more than I do. You know, he’s very good… He tries to behave as if we’re equal. But in the end he’s a Gold Medallist of the Royal Society, and I left Cambridge without taking a degree. And now and again it shows.’

‘That doesn’t mean he’s right.’

‘No, but it does make it very difficult for me to keep my end up in a discussion.’

‘Did you talk about after the war?’

‘No. I can’t, I’ve no plans. Do
you
know what you’re going to do?’

‘I’m going to keep pigs.’

‘
Pigs?
’

‘Yes. People think pigs are dirty, you know, but they’re not. They’re very clean animals, given half the chance. And it would combine so well with poetry, you see. Actually much better than teaching, because if you’re teaching
properly
you’re using the same part of your mind. But pig-keeping…’

‘Perhaps we should go into partnership. It’d shut Rivers up.’

Owen, belatedly aware of being laughed at, blushed and didn’t reply.

‘No, well, I don’t suppose I’d be much use with the pigs, but I may be able to help with the poems.’ He nodded at Owen’s tunic.

Owen extracted a sheaf of papers. ‘I told you they were all short but actually there is one long one. Antaeus and and Hercules.’ He handed the papers over. ‘Do you know the
legend? Antaeus is too strong for Hercules as long as he keeps his feet on mother Earth. But as soon as Hercules lifts him –’