Regeneration (34 page)

After dinner Rivers set out to see the patients who were due to be Boarded the following day. Anderson had at last received a visit from his wife, though it didn’t seem to have cheered him up much. The conflict between himself and his family, as to whether he should return to medicine or not, was deepening as the time came for him to leave Craiglockhart. The nightmares were still very bad, but in any case the haemophobia alone prevented any hospital service whether in Britain or France. Rivers hoped that he would be given a desk job in London, which would also enable Rivers to go on seeing him. At the same time he was a little doubtful even about that. Anderson had moved from a position of being sceptical and even uncooperative to a state of deep attachment, in which there was a danger of dependency. He left Anderson’s room shaking his head.

Sassoon was sitting by the fire in almost the same position he’d been in when Rivers left.

‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ Rivers asked.

‘Trying to keep my head down.’

‘Successfully?’

‘I think so.’

‘Have you managed to write?’

‘Finished the book. It’s called
Counter-Attack.’

‘Very appropriate.’

‘You shall have the first copy.’

Rivers looked round the room, which seemed cold and bleak in spite of the small fire. ‘Do you hear from Owen at all?’

‘Constantly. He… er… writes distinctly effusive letters. You know…’ He hesitated. ‘I knew about the hero-worship, but I’m beginning to think it was rather more than that.’

Rivers watched the firelight flicker on Sassoon’s hair and face. He said, ‘It happens.’

‘I just hope I was kind enough.’

‘I’m sure you were.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the War Office?’

‘On the contrary. I had dinner with Hope the other night, and I have an
informal
assurance that no obstacles will be put in your way. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s the best I can do.’

Sassoon took a deep breath. ‘All right. Back to the sausage machine.’

‘It doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful with the Board.’

Sassoon smiled. ‘I shall say as little as possible.’

The Board was chaired by the new CO, Colonel Balfour Graham. The previous evening Rivers and Brock had discussed the likely effects of this on the conduct of the Board, but had not been able to reach any firm conclusion. Balfour Graham hadn’t had time to get to know most of the patients. Either he’d be content simply to move things along as smoothly as possible or, at worst, he might feel obliged to assert his authority by asking both patient and MO more questions than was usual. The third member of the Board was Major Huntley, still – if his conversation over breakfast was anything to go by – obsessed by rose growing and racial degeneracy.

Anderson came first. Balfour Graham expressed some surprise that Rivers was not recommending a general discharge.

‘He still wants to serve his country,’ Rivers said. ‘And there’s absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t be able to do so. In an administrative capacity. I rather think he may be given a desk job in the War Office.’

‘Are we doing the War Office or the patient a favour?’ Balfour Graham asked.

‘He’s an able man. It might be quite good for them to have somebody with extensive experience of France.’

‘Lord,
yes
,’ said Huntley.

‘It merely occurred to me that it might be convenient for Anderson to be able to postpone the moment when he has to face the prospect of civilian medicine.’

‘That too,’ said Rivers.

The actual interview with Anderson was reasonably quick. Indeed, the whole morning went quickly. They stopped for lunch – over which Rivers professed great interest in mildew
and blackspot – and then sat down rather wearily but on time for the next ten. Rivers hardly knew at this stage whether he felt reassured or not. Balfour Graham was quick, courteous, efficient – and shrewd. Huntley’s interventions, though rare, were rather unpredictable, and seemed to depend entirely on whether he liked the patient. He took to Willard at once, and was scandalized when Rivers made some comment deploring Willard’s lack of insight. ‘What’s he want insight for? He’s supposed to be killing the buggers, Rivers, not psychoanalysing them.’

Sassoon was last but one.
‘A slightly
unusual case,’ Rivers began, dismissively. ‘In the sense that I’m recommending him for general service overseas.’

‘More than
slightly
unusual, surely?’ Balfour Graham asked with a faint smile. ‘I don’t think it’s ever been done before. Has it?’

‘I couldn’t make any other recommendation. He’s completely fit, mentally and physically, he
wants
to go back to France, and… I have been given an assurance by the War Office that no obstacles will be placed in his way.’

‘Why should they be?’ asked Huntley.

Balfour Graham said, ‘This is the young man who believes the war is being fought for the wrong reasons, and that we should explore Germany’s offer of a negotiated peace. Do you think –’

‘Those
were
his views,’ Rivers said, ‘while he was still suffering from exhaustion and the after-effects of a shoulder wound. Fortunately a brother officer intervened and he was sent here. Really no more was required than a brief period of rest and reflection. He now feels very strongly that it’s his duty to go back.’

‘He was dealt with very leniently, it seems to me,’ Huntley said.

‘He has a good record. MC. Recommended for the D S O.’

‘Ah,’ Huntley said.

‘I do see what you mean by unusual,’ Balfour Graham said.

‘The point is he
wants
to go back.’

‘Right, let’s see him.’

Sassoon came in and saluted. Rivers watched the other two.
Balfour Graham acknowledged the salute pleasantly enough. Major Huntley positively beamed. Rivers took Sassoon through the recent past, framing his questions to require no more than a simple yes or no. Sassoon’s manner was excellent. Exactly the right mixture of confidence and deference. Rivers turned to Balfour Graham.

Balfour Graham was shuffling about among his papers. Suddenly, he looked up. ‘No nightmares?’

‘No, sir.’

Sassoon’s expression didn’t change, but Rivers sensed he was lying.

‘Never?’

‘Not since I left the 4th London, sir.’

‘That was in… April?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Balfour Graham looked at Rivers. Rivers looked at the ceiling.

‘Major Huntley?’

Major Huntley leaned forward. ‘Rivers tells us you’ve changed your mind about the war. Is that right?’

A startled glance. ‘No, sir.’

Balfour Graham and Huntley looked at each other.

‘You
haven’t
changed your views?’ Balfour Graham asked.

‘No, sir.’ Sassoon’s gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Rivers. ‘I believe exactly what I believed in July. Only if possible more strongly.’

A tense silence.

‘I see,’ Balfour Graham said.

‘Wasn’t there something in
The Times?’
Huntley asked. ‘I seem to…’

He reached across for the file. Rivers leant forward, pinning it to the table with his elbow. ‘But you do now feel quite certain it’s your duty to go back?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you have no doubts about that?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘Well
,’ Balfour Graham said as the door closed behind Sassoon, ‘I suppose you are sure about this, Rivers? He’s not going to go back and foment rebellion in the ranks?’

‘No, he won’t do that. He won’t do anything to lower the morale of his men.’

‘I hope you’re right. He was lying about the nightmares, you know.’

‘Yes, I gathered that.’

‘I suppose he thinks that might be a reason for keeping him here. The point is do
we
see a reason for keeping him here? Huntley?’

Major Huntley seemed to return from a great distance. ‘Spanish Jews.’

Balfour Graham looked blank.

‘Father’s side. Spanish Jews.’

‘You know the family?’ Rivers asked.

‘Good lord, yes. Mother was a Thornycroft.’ He shook his head.
‘Ah well.
Hybrid vigour.’

Rivers was across the rose garden several paces ahead of Balfour Graham. ‘So you think he’s fit?’

‘’Course he’s fit.
Good God, man, how often do you see a physique like that, even in the so-called upper classes?’

They were back to eugenics again, but for once Rivers had no desire to interrupt.

After dinner Sassoon came to say goodbye. He’d been told the result of the Board and had spent the intervening time packing. Rivers hadn’t expected him to linger. Apart from Owen, he’d made no friends at Craiglockhart, not even Anderson, though they’d spent a large part of every day together. And he’d never bothered to disguise his hatred of the place.

‘What are you going to do?’ Rivers asked.

‘Oh, I’ll have a couple of days in London, then go home, I suppose.’

‘Time for a consultation with Dr Mercier? No, I mean it.’

‘I know you mean it. You old fox. Then Garsington, try to explain myself to the pacifists.’ He pulled a face. ‘I don’t look forward to that.’

‘Blame me. They will.’

‘I shall do no such thing.’

‘It’s a possible way of telling the story, you know.’

‘Yes, I know. But it’s not the way I’d tell it. Was it difficult, the Board?’

‘No, surprisingly easy. Major Huntley thinks you have a great future as a rose bush. Hybrid vigour.’

‘Ah, I see. Dad’s lot.’

‘I must say the sheer
force
of your refusal to recant came as rather a shock.’

Sassoon looked away. ‘I couldn’t lie.’

‘You managed all right about the nightmares.’

Silence.

‘How long has that been going on?’

‘Since you left. I’ll be all right once I’m out of this place.’

Sassoon didn’t want to talk about the nightmares. He was feeling distinctly cheerful. Exactly the same feeling he had had on board ship going to France, watching England slide away into the mist. No doubts, no scruples, no agonizing, just a straightforward, headlong retreat towards the front.

Rivers seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Don’t take unnecessary risks.’

‘No, of course not,’ Sassoon said. Though he thought he might.

He stood up, visibly anxious to be off. Rivers followed him to the door and then out into the entrance hall. Balfour Graham and Huntley were there, deep in conversation. It was going to be a very public farewell.

‘I’ll keep in touch,’ Sassoon said.

‘Yes. Try and see me before you leave England.’

They shook hands. Then Sassoon, glancing sideways at the colonel and the major, smiled a distinctly conspiratorial smile and came smartly to the salute. ‘Thank you, sir.’

For a moment, it was Callan standing there. Then the electrical room at Queen Square faded, and Rivers was back at Craiglockhart, on the black and white tiled floor, alone.

He returned to his desk, and drew a stack of files towards him. He was writing brief notes on the patients who’d been Boarded that day, but this he could do almost automatically. His thoughts wandered as he wrote. He wasted no time wondering how he would feel if Siegfried were to be maimed or killed, because this was a possibility with any patient who returned to France. He’d faced that already, many times. If anything, he was amused by the irony of the situation, that he, who was in the
business of changing people, should himself have been changed and by somebody who was clearly unaware of having done it.

It was a far deeper change, though, than merely coming to believe that a negotiated peace might be possible, and desirable. That at least it ought to be explored. He remembered telling Head how he had tried to change his life when he came back from Melanesia for the second time and how that attempt had failed. He’d gone on being reticent, introverted, reclusive. Of course it had been a very introverted, self-conscious attempt, and perhaps that was why it hadn’t worked. Here in this building, where he had no time to be introverted or self-conscious, where he hardly had a moment to himself at all, the changes had taken place without his knowing. That was not Siegfried. That was all of them. Burns and Prior and Pugh and a hundred others. As a young man he’d been both by temperament and conviction deeply conservative, and not merely in politics. Now, in middle age, the sheer extent of the
mess
seemed to be forcing him into conflict with the authorities over a very wide range of issues… medical, military. Whatever. A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance. Perhaps the rebellion of the old might count for rather more than the rebellion of the young. Certainly poor Siegfried’s rebellion hadn’t counted for much, though he reminded himself that he couldn’t
know
that. It had been a completely honest action and such actions are seeds carried on the wind. Nobody can tell where, or in what circumstances, they will bear fruit.

How on earth was Siegfried going to manage in France? His opposition to the war had not changed. If anything it had hardened. And to go back to fight, believing as he did, would be to encounter internal divisions far deeper than anything he’d experienced before. Siegfried’s ‘solution’ was to tell himself that he was going back only to look after some men, but that formula would not survive the realities of France. However devoted to his men’s welfare a platoon commander might be, in the end he is there to kill, and to train other people to kill. Poetry and pacifism are a strange preparation for that role. Though Siegfried had performed it before, and with conspicuous success. But then his hatred of the war had not been as fully fledged, as articulate, as it was now.

It was a dilemma with one very obvious way out. Rivers knew, though he had never voiced his knowledge, that Sassoon was going back with the intention of being killed. Partly, no doubt, this was youthful self-dramatization.
I’ll show them. They’ll be sorry.
But underneath that, Rivers felt there was a genuine and very deep desire for death.

And if death were to be denied? Then he might well break down. A real breakdown, this time.