Regeneration (2 page)

‘And that’s the result of your string-pulling, is it? Thanks.’

‘No, the result of my string-pulling is to get you another Board. You must take it this time.’

‘You can’t put people in lunatic asylums just like that. You have to have
reasons.’

‘They’ve got reasons.’

‘Yes, the Declaration. Well, that doesn’t prove me insane.’

‘And the hallucinations?
The corpses in Piccadilly?’

A long silence. ‘I had rather hoped my letters to you were private.’

‘I had to persuade them to give you another Board.’

‘They won’t court-martial me?’

‘No. Not in any circumstances. And if you go on refusing to be boarded, they
will
put you away.’

‘You know, Robert, I wouldn’t believe this from anybody else. Will you
swear
it’s true?’

‘Yes.’

‘On the Bible?’

Graves held up an imaginary Bible and raised his right hand. ‘I swear.’

Their shadows stretched out behind them, black on the white sand. For a moment Sassoon still hesitated. Then, with an odd little gasp, he said, ‘All right then, I’ll give way.’

In the taxi, going to Craiglockhart, Sassoon began to feel
frightened. He looked out of the window at the crowded pavements of Princes Street, thinking he was seeing them for the first and last time. He couldn’t imagine what awaited him at Craiglockhart, but he didn’t for a moment suppose the inmates were let out.

He glanced up and found the taxi-driver watching him in the mirror. All the local people must know the name of the hospital, and what it was for. Sassoon’s hand went up to his chest and began pulling at a loose thread where his MC ribbon had been.

For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches. He remained for 1 1/2 hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were brought in.

Reading the citation, it seemed to Rivers more extraordinary than ever that Sassoon should have thrown the medal away. Even the most extreme pacifist could hardly be ashamed of a medal awarded for
saving
life. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He’d been working on the file for over an hour, but, although he was now confident he knew all the facts, he was no closer to an understanding of Sassoon’s state of mind. If anything, Graves’s evidence to the Board – with its emphasis on hallucinations – seemed to suggest a full-blown psychosis rather than neurasthenia. And yet there was no other evidence for that. Misguided the Declaration might well be, but it was not deluded, illogical or incoherent. Only the throwing away of the medal still struck him as odd. That surely had been the action of a man at the end of his tether.

Well, we’ve all been there, he thought. The trouble was, he was finding it difficult to examine the evidence impartially. He
wanted
Sassoon to be ill. Admitting this made him pause. He got up and began pacing the floor of his room, from door to window and back again. He’d only ever encountered one similar case, a man who’d refused to go on fighting on religious grounds. Atrocities took place on both sides, he’d said. There was nothing to choose between the British and the Germans.

The case had given rise to heated discussions in the MO’s common room – about the freedom of the individual conscience in wartime, and the role of the army psychiatrist in ‘treating’ a
man who refused to fight. Rivers, listening to those arguments, had been left in no doubt of the depth and seriousness of the divisions. The controversy had died down only when the patient proved to be psychotic. That was the crux of the matter. A man like Sassoon would always be trouble, but he’d be a lot less trouble if he were ill.

Rivers was roused from these thoughts by the crunch of tyres on gravel. He reached the window in time to see a taxi draw up, and a man, who from his uniform could only be Sassoon, get out. After paying the driver, Sassoon stood for a moment, looking up at the building. Nobody arriving at Craiglockhart for the first time could fail to be daunted by the sheer gloomy, cavernous bulk of the place. Sassoon lingered on the drive for a full minute after the taxi had driven away, then took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and ran up the steps.

Rivers turned away from the window, feeling almost ashamed of having witnessed that small, private victory over fear.

2

__________

Light from the window behind Rivers’s desk fell directly on to Sassoon’s face. Pale skin, purple shadows under the eyes. Apart from that, no obvious signs of nervous disorder. No twitches, jerks, blinks, no repeated ducking to avoid a long-exploded shell. His hands, doing complicated things with cup, saucer, plate, sandwiches, cake, sugar tongs and spoon, were perfectly steady. Rivers raised his own cup to his lips and smiled. One of the nice things about serving afternoon tea to newly arrived patients was that it made so many neurological tests redundant.

So far he hadn’t looked at Rivers. He sat with his head slightly averted, a posture that could easily have been taken for arrogance, though Rivers was more inclined to suspect shyness. The voice was slightly slurred, the flow of words sometimes hesitant, sometimes rushed. A disguised stammer, perhaps, but a life-long stammer, Rivers thought, not the recent, self-conscious stammer of the neurasthenic.

‘While I remember, Captain Graves rang to say he’ll be along some time after dinner. He sent his apologies for missing the train.’

‘He
is
still coming?’

‘Yes.’

Sassoon looked relieved. ‘Do you know, I don’t think Graves’s caught a train in his life? Unless somebody was there to
put
him on it.’

‘We were rather concerned about you.’

‘In case the lunatic went missing?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

‘I was all right. I wasn’t even surprised, I thought he’d slept in. He’s been doing a… a lot of rushing round on my behalf recently. You’ve no idea how much work goes into
rigging
a Medical Board.’

Rivers pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead and
massaged the inner corners of his eyes. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have. You know this may sound naïve but… to
me
… the accusation that a Medical Board has been rigged is quite a serious one.’

‘I’ve no complaints. I was dealt with in a perfectly fair and reasonable way. Probably better than I deserved.’

‘What kind of questions did they ask?’

Sassoon smiled. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’ve read the report, if that’s what you mean. I’d still like to hear your version.’

‘Oh: “Did I object to fighting on religious grounds?” I said I didn’t. It was rather amusing, actually. For a moment I thought they were asking me whether I objected to going on a crusade. “Did I think I was qualified to decide when the war should end?” I said I hadn’t thought about my qualifications.’ He glanced at Rivers.
‘Not true.
And then… then Colonel Langdon asked
said
“Your friend tells us you’re very good at bombing. Don’t you still dislike the Germans?”’

A long silence. The net curtain behind Rivers’s head billowed out in a glimmering arc, and a gust of cool air passed over their faces.

‘And what did you say to that?’

‘I don’t remember.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘It didn’t matter what I said.’

‘It matters now.’

‘All right.’ A faint smile.
‘Yes,
I am quite good at bombing.
No,
I do not still dislike the Germans.’

‘Does that mean you once did?’

Sassoon looked surprised. For the first time something had been said that contradicted his assumptions. ‘Briefly. April and May of last year, to be precise.’

A pause. Rivers waited. After a while Sassoon went on, almost reluctantly. ‘A friend of mine had been killed. For a while I used to go out on patrol every night, looking for Germans to kill. Or rather I told myself that’s what I was doing. In the end I didn’t know whether I was trying to kill them, or just giving them plenty of opportunities to kill me.’

‘ “Mad Jack.” ’

Sassoon looked taken aback. ‘Graves really
has
talked, hasn’t he?’

‘It’s the kind of thing the Medical Board would need to know.’ Rivers hesitated. ‘Taking
unnecessary
risks is one of the first signs of a war neurosis.’

‘Is it?’ Sassoon looked down at his hands. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Nightmares and hallucinations come later.’

‘What’s an “unnecessary risk” anyway? The maddest thing
I
ever did was done under orders.’ He looked up, to see if he should continue. ‘We were told to go and get the regimental badges off a German corpse. They reckoned he’d been dead two days, so obviously if we got the badges they’d know which battalion was opposite. Full moon, not a cloud in sight,
absolutely mad,
but off we went. Well, we got there – eventually – and what do we find? He’s been dead a helluva lot longer than two days, and he’s French anyway.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Pulled one of his boots off and sent it back to battalion HQ. With quite a bit of his leg left inside.’

Rivers allowed another silence to open up. ‘I gather we’re not going to talk about nightmares?’

‘You’re in charge.’

‘Ye-es. But then one of the paradoxes of being an army psychiatrist is that you don’t actually get very far by
ordering
your patients to be frank.’

‘I’ll be as frank as you like. I did have nightmares when I first got back from France. I don’t have them now.’

‘And the hallucinations?’

He found this more difficult. ‘It was just that when I woke up, the nightmares didn’t always stop. So I used to see…’ A deep breath. ‘Corpses. Men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor.’

‘And you were awake when this happened?’

‘I don’t know. I must’ve been, because I could see the sister.’

‘And was this always at night?’

‘No. It happened once during the day. I’d been to my club for lunch, and when I came out I sat on a bench, and… I suppose I must’ve nodded off.’ He was forcing himself to go on. ‘When I woke up, the pavement was covered in corpses. Old ones, new ones, black, green.’ His mouth twisted. ‘People were treading on their faces.’

Rivers took a deep breath. ‘You say you’d just woken up?’

‘Yes. I used to sleep quite a bit during the day, because I was afraid to go to sleep at night.’

‘When did all this stop?’

‘As soon as I left the hospital. The atmosphere in that place was really terrible. There was one man who used to boast about killing German prisoners. You can imagine what living with
him
was like.’

‘And the nightmares haven’t recurred?’

‘No. I do dream, of course, but not about the war. Sometimes a dream seems to go on after I’ve woken up, so there’s a a kind of in-between stage.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t know whether that’s abnormal.’

‘I hope not. It happens to me all the time.’ Rivers sat back in his chair. ‘When you look back now on your time in the hospital, do
you
think you were “shell-shocked”?’

‘I don’t know. Somebody who came to see me told my uncle he thought I was. As against that, I wrote one or two good poems while I was in there. We-ell…’ He smiled.
‘I
was pleased with them.’

‘You don’t think it’s possible to write a good poem in a state of shock?’

‘No, I don’t.’

Rivers nodded. ‘You may be right. Would it be possible for me to see them?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll copy them out.’

Rivers said, ‘I’d like to move on now to the… thinking behind the Declaration. You say your motives aren’t religious?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Would you describe yourself as a pacifist?’

‘I don’t think so. I can’t possibly say
“No
war is ever justified”, because I haven’t thought about it enough. Perhaps some wars are. Perhaps this one was when it started. I just don’t think our war aims –
whatever they may be
– and we don’t know – justify this level of slaughter.’

‘And you say you
have
thought about your qualifications for saying that?’

‘Yes.
I’m only too well aware of how it sounds. A
second-lieutenant,
no less, saying “The war must stop”. On the other
hand, I have
been
there. I’m at least as well qualified as some of the old men you see sitting around in clubs, cackling on about “attrition” and “wastage of manpower” and…’ His voice became a vicious parody of an old man’s voice. ‘“
Lost heavily in that last scrap.
You don’t talk like that if you’ve watched them die.’

‘No intelligent or sensitive person would talk like that anyway.’

A slightly awkward pause. ‘I’m not saying there are no exceptions.’

Rivers laughed. ‘The point is you hate civilians, don’t you? The “callous”, the “complacent”, the “unimaginative”. Or is “hate” too strong a word?’

‘No.’

‘So. What you felt for the Germans, rather briefly, in the spring of last year, you now feel for the overwhelming majority of your fellow-countrymen?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know, I think you were quite right not to say too much to the Board.’

‘That wasn’t my idea, it was Graves’s. He was afraid I’d sound too sane.’

‘When you said the Board was “rigged”, what did you mean?’

‘I meant the decision to send me here, or or somewhere similar, had been taken before I went in.’

‘And this had all been fixed by Captain Graves?’

‘Yes.’ Sassoon leant forward. ‘The point is they weren’t going to court-martial me. They were just going to lock me up somewhere…’ He looked round the room.
‘Worse
than this.’

Rivers smiled. ‘There
are
worse places, believe me.’

‘I’m sure there are,’ Sassoon said politely.

‘They were going to certify you, in fact?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Did anybody on the Board say anything to you about this?’