by Pat Barker
Head looked at him. ‘What happened to the gently flowing Rivers we all used to know and love?’
‘Went AWOL in Scotland. Never been seen since.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, that was my impression.’
The lift door was about to close. Rivers broke into a run, and Wantage, one of the non-pacifist orderlies, clanged the gate open again. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Room for a thin one.’
He was returning a man in a wheelchair to the ward. Rivers squeezed in beside the wheelchair and pressed the button for the top floor.
Wantage was the most popular of the orderlies, partly because his built-up boot supplied an instant explanation for why he wasn’t in France. He was a fat, jolly man with a limitless capacity for hate. He hated skivers, he hated shirkers, he hated conchies, he hated the Huns, he hated the Kaiser. He loved the war. He had the gentlest hands in the hospital. He would have given anything to be able to go and fight. Whenever Rivers saw him lurching along behind a wheelchair, he was reminded of the crippled boy in the Pied Piper story, left behind when the other children went into the mountain.
At the second floor the lift stopped and a young nurse got in. Viggors, the patient in the wheelchair, spoke to her, blushing slightly – she was evidently a great favourite – and then sat, slumped to one side, his eyes level with her waist, gazing covertly at her breasts. Wantage chattered on. On the third floor the lift stopped again and Wantage pushed the wheelchair out.
Rivers was left wishing he hadn’t seen that look. Every day in this hospital one was brutally reminded that the worst tragedies of the war were not marked by little white crosses.
For safety reasons – his patients were mobile and could use the fire escapes – both his wards were on the top floor. The hospital had been built as a children’s hospital; the top floor had been the nursery and the walls were decorated with Baa-baa Black Sheep, Little Bo Peep, Red Riding Hood, Humpty-Dumpty. The windows were barred. On his arrival Rivers had asked for these bars to be removed, but the War Office refused to pay for any alterations beyond the absolute minimum: the provision of adult-size baths and lavatories. Not washbasins. Lawrence was there now, shaving in a basin that barely reached his knees. The eye, deprived of normal perspective, saw him as a giant. No amount of experience seemed to correct the initial impression.
Rivers collected his overnight key from sister and walked along the corridor to his own room. The room was vast, with a huge bay window overlooking Vincent Square. He went through into the adjoining room and asked his secretary to send Captain Manning in.
Manning had been admitted because the anxiety attacks he’d suffered ever since his return from France had become more severe, partly as a result of his obsession with the Pemberton Billing affair. Rivers would have liked to tell him to ignore the trial for the farrago of muck-raking nonsense it was, but that was not possible. Manning had been sent a newspaper cutting about Maud Allan and the ‘cult of the clitoris’. More recently he’d received a copy of the 47,000 article. Manning was being targeted, presumably by someone who knew he was a homosexual, and he could hardly be expected to ignore that.
‘Have you been waiting long?’ Rivers asked.
‘Couple of minutes.’
Manning looked tired. No doubt last night had been spent dreading coming into hospital. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘All right. I’ve been given a room to myself. I didn’t expect that.’
‘Have you brought the article with you?’ Rivers asked.
Manning handed it over. It was not, as Rivers had been assuming, a newspaper cutting, but a specially produced copy, printed on to thick card. At the top – typewritten – was the message: In the hope that this will awaken your conscience.
‘Did you read it at the time?’ Manning asked. ‘When it first came out?’
‘No.’ Rivers smiled faintly. ‘A pleasure postponed.’
AS I SEE IT – THE FIRST 47,000
Harlots on the Wall
There have been given many reasons why England is prevented from putting her full strength into the War. On several occasions in the columns of the Imperialist I have suggested that Germany is making use of subde but successful means to nullify our effort. Hope of profit cannot be the only reason for our betrayal. All nations have their Harlots on the Wall, but these are discovered in the first assault and the necessary action is taken. It is in the citadel that the true danger lies. Corruption and blackmail being the work of menials is cheaper than bribery. Moreover, fear of exposure entraps and makes slaves of men whom money could never buy. There is all the more reason, as I see it, to suppose that the Germans, with their usual efficiency, are making use of the most productive and cheapest methods.
Often in this column I have hinted at the possession of knowledge which tends to substantiate this view. Within the past few days the most extraordinary facts have been placed before me which co-ordinate with my past information.
Spreading Debauchery
There exists in the cabinet noir of a certain German Prince a book compiled by the Secret Service from the reports of German agents who have infested this country for the past twenty years, agents so vile and spreading debauchery of such a lasciviousness as only German minds could conceive and only German bodies execute.
Sodom and Lesbia
The officer who discovered this book while on special service briefly oudined for me its stupefying contents. In the beginning of the book is a precis of general instructions regarding the propagation of evils which all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbia. The blasphemous compilers even speak of the Groves and High Places mentioned in the Bible. The most insidious arguments are outlined for the use of the German agent in his revolting work. Then more than a thousand pages are filled with the names mentioned by German agents in their reports. There are the names of 47,000 English men and women.
It is a most catholic miscellany. The names of privy councillors, youths of the chorus, wives of Cabinet Ministers, dancing girls, even Cabinet Ministers themselves, while diplomats, poets, bankers, editors, newspaper proprietors and members of His Majesty’s household follow each other with no order of precedence.
As an example of the thoroughness with which the German agent works, lists of public houses and bars were given which had been successfully demoralized. These could then be depended upon to spread vice with the help of only one fixed agent. To secure those whose social standing would suffer from frequenting public places, comfortable flats were taken and furnished in an erotic manner. Paphian photographs were distributed, while equivocal pamphlets were printed as the anonymous work of well-known writers.
The Navy in Danger
No one in the social scale was exempted from contamination by this perfect system. Agents were specially enlisted in the navy, particularly in the engine-rooms. These had their special instructions. Incestuous bars were established in Portsmouth and Chatham. In these meeting places the stamina of British sailors was undermined. More dangerous still, German agents, under the guise of indecent liaison, could obtain information as to the disposition of the fleet.
Even the loiterer in the streets was not immune. Meretricious agents of the Kaiser were stationed at such points as Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner. In this black book of sin details were given of the unnatural defloration of children who were drawn to the parks by the summer evening concerts.
The World of High Politics
Impure as were all these things, the great danger was seen in the reports of those agents who had obtained entrée to the world of high politics. Wives of men in supreme position were entangled. In Lesbian ecstasy the most sacred secrets of State were betrayed. The sexual peculiarities of members of the peerage were used as a leverage to open fruitful fields for espionage.
In the glossary of this book is a list of expressions supposed to be used among themselves by the soul-sick victims of this nauseating disease so skilfully sp
read by Potsdam.
Lives are in Jeopardy
In his official reports the German agent is not an idle boaster. The thought that 47,000 English men and women are held in enemy bondage through fear calls all clean spirits to mortal combat. There are three million men in France whose lives are in jeopardy, and whose bravery is of no avail because of the lack of moral courage in 47,000 of their countrymen, and numbering among their ranks, as they do, men and women in whose hands the destiny of this Empire rests.
As I see it, a carefully cultivated introduction of practices which hint at the extermination of the race is to be the means by which the German is to prevent us avenging those mounds of lime and mud which once were Britons.
The Fall of Rome
When in time I grasped the perfection of this demoniacal plan, it seemed to me that all the horrors of shells and gas and pestilence introduced by the Germans in their open warfare would have but a fraction of the effect in exterminating the manhood of Britain as the plan by which they have already destroyed the first 47,000.
As I have already said in these columns, it is a terrible thought to contemplate that the British Empire should fall as fell the great Empire of Rome, and the victor now, as then, should be the Hun.
The story of the contents of this book has opened my eyes, and the matter must not rest.
Rivers threw the page down. ‘If only German minds can conceive of this lasciviousness and only German bodies execute it, how on earth do the 47,000 manage to do it?’ He took off his glasses and swept his hand down across his eyes. ‘Sorry, I’m being donnish.’ He looked at Manning, noting the lines of strain around his eyes, the coarse tremor as he raised the cigarette to his mouth. For somebody like Manning, profoundly committed to living a double life, the revelation that both sides of his life were visible to unknown eyes must be like having the door to the innermost part of one’s identity smashed open. ‘Has anybody else been sent this?’
‘Ross. One or two others.’
‘Friends of Ross?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ross is a… quite a dangerous man to know.’
‘What can I do, Rivers? It’s not a recent friendship.’
Rivers sighed. ‘I don’t think you can do anything.’
Manning sat brooding. ‘I think it would help if I felt I could understand it. I mean, I can see the war’s going pretty badly and there are always going to be people who want scapegoats instead of reasons, but… Why this? I can see why people with German names get beaten up… or or interned. And conchies. I don’t approve, but I can understand it. I don’t understand this.’
‘I’m not sure I do. I think it’s the result of certain impulses rising to the surface in wartime, and having to be very formally disowned. Homosexuality, for instance. In war there’s this enormous glorification of love between men, and yet at the same time it arouses anxiety. Is it the right kind of love? Well, one way to make sure it’s the right kind is to make public disapproval of the other thing crystal clear. And then there’s pleasure in killing–’
Manning looked shocked. ‘I don’t know that –’
‘No, I meant civilians. Vicarious, but real nevertheless. And in the process sadistic impulses are aroused that would normally be repressed, and that also causes anxiety. So to put on a play by a known homosexual in which a woman kisses a man’s severed head…’
‘I talked about the trial to Jane. I said I thought the real target was Ross, and one or two others, and she said of course I did. Seeing – what was it? “Seeing his own sex as peripheral to the point at issue was a feat of mental agility of which no man is capable.”’
‘I look forward to meeting Mrs Manning one day.’
‘She says the the… sentimentality about the role women are playing – doing their bit and all that – really masks a kind of deep-rooted fear that they’re getting out of line. She thinks pillorying Maud Allan is actually a way of teaching them a lesson. Not just lesbians. All women. Just as Salome is presented as a strong woman by Wilde, and yet at the same time she has to be killed. I mean it is quite striking at the end when all the men fall on her and kill her.’
‘What do you think about that?’
‘I think it’s a bit naïve. I think it ignores Wilde’s identification with Salome. He isn’t saying women like this have to be destroyed. He’s saying people like me have to be destroyed. And how right he was. Is.’
This was all very well, Rivers thought, but Manning was ill, and it was not literary discussion that was going to cure him.
‘Do you think Spencer’s mad?’ Manning asked abruptly.
‘On the basis of his evidence, yes. Though whether he’ll be recognized as mad…’
‘It’s an odd contrast with Sassoon, isn’t it?’
Rivers looked surprised.
‘Spencer being feted like this. Sassoon says something perfectly sensible about the war, and he’s packed off to a mental hospital.’
Of course, Rivers thought, all the members of Robert Ross’s circle would know the story of Sassoon’s protest against the war, and the part he’d played in persuading Sassoon to go back.
Manning said, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t mention him?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s a patient.’
‘He’s somebody we both know.’
‘Only he’s been on my mind lately. I was wondering if they’d have the nerve to send this to him. Or to anybody out there.’
‘I think the sort of mind that produces this can’t conceive of the possibility that any of “the 47,000” might be in France.’
So far Manning had found it impossible to talk about the war. Manning himself would have denied this. He would have said they talked about it all the time: strategy, tactics, war aims, the curiously inadequate response of civilian writers, the poems of Sassoon and Graves. Suddenly, Rivers thought he saw a way of beginning, very gently, to force the issue. ‘Are you familiar with the strict Freudian view of war neurosis?’ he asked. Manning, he knew, had read a certain amount of Freud.
‘I didn’t know there was one.’
‘Oh, yes. Basically, they believe the experience of an all-male environment, with a high level of emotional intensity, together with the experience of battle, arouses homosexual and sadistic impulses that are normally repressed. In vulnerable men – obviously those in whom the repressed desires are particularly strong – this leads to breakdown.’
‘Is that what you believe?’
Rivers shook his head. ‘I want to know what you think.’
‘I don’t know what makes other people break down. I don’t think sex had much to do with my breakdown.’ A slight smile. ‘But then I’m not a repressed homosexual.’
Rivers smiled back. ‘But you must have a… an instinctive reaction, that it’s possible, or it’s obvious nonsense, or –’
‘I’m just trying to think. Do you know Sassoon’s poem “The Kiss”?’
‘The one about the bayonet. Yes.’
‘I think that’s the strongest poem he’s ever written. You know, I’ve never served with him so I don’t know this from personal experience, but I’ve talked a lot to Robert Graves and he says the extent to which Sassoon contrives to be two totally different people at the Front is absolutely amazing. You know he’s a tremendously successful and bloodthirsty platoon commander, and yet at the same time, back in billets, out comes the notebook. Another anti-war poem. And the poem uses the experience of the platoon commander, but it never uses any of his attitudes. And yet for once, in that one poem, he gets both versions of himself in.’
Yes, Rivers thought. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see that.’
‘And of course it’s crawling with sexual ambiguities. But then I think it’s too easy to see that as a matter of personal… I don’t know what. The fact is the army’s attitude to the bayonet is pretty bloody ambiguous. You read the training manuals and they’re all going on about importance of close combat. Fair enough, but you get the impression there’s a val
ue in it which is independent of whether it gains the objective or not. It’s proper war. Manly war. Not all this nonsense about machine-guns and shrapnel. And it’s reflected in the training. I mean, it’s one long stream of sexual innuendo. Stick him in the gooleys. No more little fritzes. If Sassoon had used language like that, he’d never have been published.’ Manning stopped abruptly. ‘You know I think I’ve lost the thread. No, that’s it, I was trying… I was trying to be honest and think whether I hated bayonet practice more because… because the body that the sack represents is one that I… come on, Rivers. Nice psychological term?’
‘Love.’
‘I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think so. We all hate it. I’ve no way of knowing whether I hate it more, because we don’t talk about it. It’s just a bloody awful job, and we get on and do it. I mean, you split enormous parts of yourself off, anyway.’
‘Is that what you did?’
‘I suppose so.’ For a moment it seemed he was about to go on, then he shook his head.
When he was sure there’d be no more, Rivers said, ‘You know we are going to have to talk about the war, Charles.’
‘I do talk about it.’
Silence.
‘I just don’t see what good it would do to churn everything up. I know what the theory is.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘My son Robert, when he was little … he used to enjoy being bathed. And then quite suddenly he turned against it. He used to go stiff and scream blue murder every time his nurse tried to put him in. And it turned out he’d been watching the water go down the plug-hole and he obviously thought he might go down with it. Everybody told him not to be stupid.’ Manning smiled. ‘I must say it struck me as an eminently reasonable fear.’